Spare me the misery, writes Julia Stephenson. I’m happy to be childless.

I’ve just read another miserable article about a middle-aged childless woman rueing her lack of offspring.

'Oh woe is me,’ the lady will weep. 'I am doomed to a lonely future with no one to love me and mop my furrowed brow when I am in the old people’s home’.

There is usually a picture accompanying these gloomy musings of the sad lady looking wistfully into the distance. She is beautifully dressed and groomed and looks younger than her age.

This is because she has no children, has time to lavish on herself, and doesn’t have to fend off bankruptcy forking out the 210k which is the estimate for raising a child these days.

She will have enough sleep, not having to fend off sleepless small infants, and will have a better relationship with her partner as she can put him first, not last, which is the lot of neglected men folk, many of whom rush off and have affairs as they are so jealous of their offspring.

However, the myth that childless women are drowning in regrets goes on. Recently we were treated to the screaming headline 'Barren Britain, 19% of British women are childless at menopause’. Note the use of the word 'barren’ with its connotation of bleak and empty desolation.

Speaking as one of the barren 19 per cent, I certainly don’t feel bleak, empty or that life is lacking. For how you can miss something you’ve never had? Having children is such a cataclysmic event you can’t really know what it would be like just from observing other people.

And what is the point of regretting something that you can’t do anything about? For many women having children is a joy, but it is no sure-fire guarantee of happiness. Perhaps my life would have been immeasurably enriched by a family, but it hasn’t happened and I have filled my life with other things and feel it churlish to moan when there is so much to be grateful for.

Many childless women complain about unkind and tactless comments, but I think they are being oversensitive. I take umbrage at the drop of a hat, but no one ever said anything judgemental to me about not having children.

Occasionally people might ask why I don’t have any, but I see this as polite curiosity not any kind of judgement. In my experience mums wouldn’t dream of ostracising a childless woman. On the contrary, most of them relish the opportunity to have a conversation that isn’t about nappies and nannies.

I never thought very much about having children when I was younger. I vaguely assumed I would and if I’d got pregnant by accident I would have gone through with it. I only ever once had a pregnancy 'scare’. (Never mind 'scare', I was weak with terror).

When I missed several periods when I was married to my first husband, we sat down with heavy hearts to discuss what we would do. We both decided, rather grudgingly, that we would 'go through with it'. But despite six months of no periods, the pregnancy test kept coming back negative.

Like many young women I pursued strange eating habits, and was subsisting on a diet of grape nuts plus the occasional slice of malt loaf. Perhaps it was this restrictive diet that caused my periods to stop for months at a time.

So, despite a lifetime of being careless about contraception, I have never become pregnant. I’ve never been interested enough to be tested, but I must be infertile.

After all, my boyfriend of six years has fathered three children by three different mothers. He clearly has SAS sperm that can storm an impregnable (sic) fortress.

Obviously, in the past he only had to look at a woman to make her pregnant. But in me his sperm has met its match.

I rather think three children are more than enough anyway. For man or woman.

 

 

It may be politically incorrect to say so, but if you cannot have children it could be nature’s way of natural selection. (Although this argument can be immediately challenged by knowledge of complete halfwits who manage to father scores of children without the brains or inclination to support any of them.)

There is an argument that we need young people to work to create resources for oldies, but with huge families becoming fashionable again amongst the chattering classes and a constant stream of immigrants who procreate enthusiastically, the last thing the UK has to worry about is under-population.

Besides, thrifty oldies usually save like mad, and with no children depending on an inheritance, will be able to fund their old age nursing quite comfortably. Although with savers being penalised with low interest rates this becomes increasingly challenging.

Many childless women say that although they don’t have children they love other people's, waxing lyrical about nephews, nieces and godchildren, and how much they lavish time and presents on them. This is where I start to feel guilty for I have no interest in other people’s children at all, not even my nephews and step-children who I find a bit boring.

Oddly, considering my indifference to children, I am godmother to two. Although perhaps not so odd, as there is always the thrilling possibility that, as a childless woman, I will leave them everything in my will. Fat chance! My loot is going to donkeys in the Middle East. Sorry kids.

(Oh dear. Putting that on record really scuppers my chances of any visits at the old people’s home now. As a potentially lonely oldie I give this matter quite a bit of thought. But there is never any guarantee that one’s offspring will take care of one, judging by the scores of elderly who don’t get a visit from one year to the next.)

It’s a cliché, I know, but all my maternal feelings have been subsumed into animals. I spend a lot of time looking after my rescue dogs and my ex-battery chickens who live on the roof of my London flat.

When my goddaughter’s mother acquired a new puppy I was calling for constant updates. When we met for drinks we would spend hours cooing over photos of the pup on her mobile phone. I realised afterwards, to my shame, that I hadn’t asked after my goddaughter once. I’m surprised I haven’t been sacked yet.

I am, however, besotted by Nutty, my late mother’s elderly sheltie, and to my boyfriend’s irritation spend hours concocting special meaty meals for him (Nutty, not the boyfriend).

Nutty is treated to tasty morsels of the best that Daylesford’s has to offer. Minced lamb and gravy with freshly cooked vegetables, garnished with parsley from my window box and drizzled with top quality extra virgin olive oil is a favourite snack.

Sometimes Nutty can be tempted with a little Duchy Originals fresh salmon, braised in butter and tarragon. But he only likes fresh fish twice a week.

Boyfriend must cope with a dried biscuit and a tin of something or other. (I wouldn’t dream of giving Nutty anything out of a tin as I’m worried about aluminium leakage).

I can now sympathise with modern mothers who put their offspring before their partners. It’s reassuring to feel in step with the Mumsnet generation on something.

Of course, I am not a complete monster when it comes to children. I am fond of my boyfriend’s sweet-natured eight-year-old son as he had a difficult start in life. And my young godchildren are bright and charming (for brief periods). Though I must confess I probably wouldn’t recognise them in a police line and fail to remember their birthdays.

Generally speaking, children are sweet and biddable up to the age of about 13. Then they suddenly morph into sullen, clumpy mute teenagers, unable to communicate with anyone over 16.

My boyfriend’s older children (13 and 22) give him a lot of stress and on current form seem unlikely to give him any solace or support in old age.

While his 13-year-old daughter is ravishing, she smokes like a chimney and doesn’t speak. At family gatherings she rushes to the nearest computer and logs into Facebook for the duration. She will grunt a greeting, but that’s it. And it’s so long since I heard my nephew speak I am wondering if he is in fact mute.

Others report similar examples of non-speaking youth. My friend Tania returned from a family holiday horrified that none of her nieces or nephews could hold a conversation. The only thing that incited any interest was the thought that the Government would no longer pay for them to laze around at university studying a non-subject like sociology for four years.

In my view, people only get interesting after the age of 40, so there is still time for these boring mute teenagers to blossom.

When sad barren ladies weep into their cocktails they should be forced to read Julie Myerson’s excoriating memoir Living With Teenagers. Any misty-eyed views of parenthood would disappear instantly.

Abused and beaten up by her teenage offspring, then vilified for writing about it (that's what writers do, for heaven’s sake!), I salute her for sharing her reality of motherhood. I’m sure many parents have a rosier experience, but writers like Miss Myerson provide a much needed rebalancing ballast.

She is not the only mother who has broken the taboo of revealing the dark side of motherhood. Two years ago French writer Corinne Maier wrote No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not to Have Children. (What? Only 40? I hear you cry.)

Miss Maier insists that having children is environmentally destructive as well as 'boring’. She reckons she’d have had a far more interesting life if she’d never had any. Then instead of filling washing machines and getting up at the crack of dawn to do the school run, she could have been writing more books and having a far jollier time all round.

So, while reams of desperate women are going through the tortuous process of IVF, freezing their eggs and having random unprotected sex with drunken strangers, she is encouraging them to think again.

'To have a child in Europe or America is immoral,' she writes, 'with scarce resources wasted on a way of life that is ever more voracious, hungry for fuel and destructive of the environment.'

Quite.

So if I am asked why I haven’t had children I have the perfect excuse: I have sacrificed having children for the sake of the planet. So other people’s children won’t have to fight for dwindling supplies of fuel, water and food. Yes, it’s a noble sacrifice, but someone has to do it. Sob.

Not because I am too idle, like to lie in the bath for hours undisturbed and would much prefer a brood of Shetland sheepdogs.

 

 

picture posed by models