Women: what will you do first – have that glittering career you’ve always dreamed of, or get babies quick-sharp before your maternal need reaches a shrieking climax and you’re left yearning for the children that will make your life complete?

Kirstie Allsopp has been in some pretty hot water today over comments she made about life choices. She pointed out (quite rightly) that if you have a womb and ovaries, your chances of using those to make a baby drop sharply after a certain age. That’s obviously common sense. Unfortunately, she then used that to say that if she had a daughter she’d advise her not to go to University early in life (i.e. shortly after 18) and instead focus on having a family and saving studying and a career for later.

She’s taken a lot of crap for saying this, and has taken a lot of agreement, too: from people who did have children young, or those who wish they had.

Here’s the problem: Kirstie gave what is essentially some good advice. If you want kids in a certain way (and if you’re able to have them in that way), you have to plan relatively early. Unfortunately, this good advice was presented in a way that rested on a huge number of assumptions. It’s not the advice that’s bad, it’s what it rests on.

She has, in no particular order, assumed that:

– All women want the same things (career and babies).

– All women are biologically capable of having children and will want to have biological offspring.

– A career is always a choice, as opposed to something many people do because they need to put food on the table.

– Women shoulder the responsibility for the propagation of the human race.

Can women ‘have it all’?

I’d be less angry about comments on careers and children if it weren’t for the fact that it is always presented as a choice that women – and only women – need to make. Incidentally, as I stand up loudly and proudly and state that ‘not all women’ want to have babies, to correct this incredibly common assumption, I look forward to the men who recently commented on my ‘sex entitlement’ blog to join in with me, correcting those gender assumptions they so hated when they believed them to be directed at dudes.

Sarcastic asides over, men are never asked ‘hey, are you sure you want to have this career now? Shouldn’t you have kids first?’ Of course no one ever asks men this, because society has an inherent aversion to male child-rearing, and feels that kids are the sole preserve of women. This puts massive undue responsibility on women, and leaves men standing on the sidelines being patronised by strangers when they take over the duty of ‘babysitting’ their own children. Not to mention it makes women like me really bloody angry when they keep having to answer the same tickbox list of questions.

Conversations about my potential future offspring fall into two broad categories:

a) relevant and interesting conversations (these are the ones I have with my partner, where we discuss our thoughts on The Future)

b) totally unnecessary, irrelevant and intrusive conversations (the ones I have with every other twat who thinks they know better than me what I think)

The latter type usually consists of a friend or family member telling me in syrupy tones that one day I’ll just wake up and – BAM – suddenly I will want a baby so hard I will be unsure how I can ever have wanted anything else in my life. They tell me that having children is the best thing that ever happened to them and that, ergo, it would be the best thing to ever happen to me. It might be, I don’t know. I’m not a fucking psychic. All I know is that right now – right this instant – I don’t want one. And you nagging me about it is unlikely to make me start ovulating. So, if you’re one of those people who likes to tell people to have kids, pay attention.

Five things people need to stop telling me about children

1. You’ll change your mind one day.

I’ve been fairly open about the fact that I don’t really want children. I may well change my mind one day: I’m a human, and we have a habit of doing that. But you don’t get to tell me that unless you have actually lived inside my head. That’s not only impossible but undesirable – it’s a terribly sordid place.

2. It’s the only real purpose for us in life!

By ‘us’ do you mean ‘people’? Because sure, it is a purpose of the human race to survive. And we, as a species, need to make sure we don’t die out any time soon. But there’s a huge leap to be made between ‘survival of the species’ and ‘my individual choices.’ If I’m one of the last people on Earth this argument might hold weight, but given that there are around 6 billion of us, I don’t think my uterus is the vital pivot on which our survival depends.  I no more have a moral responsibility to breed than I have a moral responsibility not to die.

3. Your biological clock is ticking…

I’m getting older, if that’s what you mean, but I’m fascinated as to how you have such an in-depth insight into the state of my reproductive system. For all you know it might not work. For all you know I might not have one.

4. Oh, you must hate children then.

They’re OK, I suppose. They are like adults, only smaller and they say hilarious stupid things sometimes, and also if you have a child you have an excuse to do things like play with the Brio train sets in the Early Learning Centre without being asked to leave. I bloody love some kids (usually ones I am related to, or particularly well-behaved offspring of my friends) but there are many kids who are – let’s face it – twats.

I don’t ‘hate’ or ‘love’ kids. As with adults, I will form my opinion on them based on discussion with the individual in question, and possibly a Frozen singalong. Only then can you get the true measure of a person.

5. Don’t you think it’s a bit selfish to choose your work over children?

No. Nor is it selfish to choose travel, hobbies, or sitting on the sofa staring blankly into space for forty years. All of these things are legitimate life choices, no more or less selfish than the decision to have children. You know why? Because I haven’t had children yet. That’s the beauty of it! If I did have children then certainly I’d be pretty selfish if I ignored them in favour of writing angry blogs and eating ice-cream at 11 am on a Monday for no reason. Given that I don’t have them, my choices can only be selfish or unselfish in relation to how they affect the people I know: people who actually exist right now, as opposed to some possible future person who may never even come into being.

So there you go. Some thoughts on kids. If, like me, you are a 30-year-old cis woman and people are constantly nagging you about your biological clock, feel free to shout this in their face until they stop talking to you.

Kids: have ’em, don’t have ’em, dither over your decision for years before you make it – it’s none of my fucking business.

Hands up who’s been with family over Christmas? And hands up who’s had to have the obligatory conversation with relatives about why you’re still single? Well, If I weren’t typing I’d be waving my hands frantically in the air, then using them to smash things in frustration about people’s unnecessary interference in my life.

Why does anyone think it is OK to ask me when I’m going to get a boyfriend? If you confide in someone that you’re lonely and they offer you dating advice, they’re responding to a specific request. But it’s a hell of a leap to assume that you can quiz your single friends/family members on their relationship status, and then hint to them that they should be working harder to ensure that they’re soon safely ensconced in a loving couple which, by the way, should really get on and pop out some babies soon.

I’m single because I like it

I think I might get this printed on a t-shirt that I can wear to the next family gathering so that I don’t need to waste my breath saying it over and over again.

Being single is brilliant. I can see people I like, avoid people I don’t, fill my diary with dinners and dates and drinking. If I’m in the pub and having a bad time I can go home, safe in the knowledge that I haven’t “thrown a strop” and dragged a partner home with me. If I’m bored of an evening, I can flip through my black book and see who wants to come over.

I can love people, fuck people, get drunk and be sick in the gutter and moan with hungover shame in a pile on the sofa the next day – and none of this will be of significance to anyone other than me.

Don’t assume that ‘alone’ means ‘lonely’

The question ‘when are you going to get a boyfriend?’ rests on the gargantuan assumption that the life I lead is incomplete. I think some family members imagine that I sit at home every night crying into a romance novel, lamenting the gaping, boyfriend-shaped hole in my lonely, miserable heart. I say “I don’t want a boyfriend.” They hear “I can’t get a boyfriend.”

This implies that no one in the history of the world has ever or could ever make an active choice to be alone, because being alone is a Bad Thing.

But of course, those of us who are alone know that it’s not. Being alone is a joyful, wonderful thing. We get to go out when we like, stay in when we like, spend time doing crap DIY, writing blogs or committing ourselves to whimsical projects. We get to drink all the gin in the cupboard, eat whatever food we’ve scraped from the back of the fridge, and then have a victorious wank right in the middle of the lounge.

My biological clock is of no importance

At 27 years old I am now officially ‘pushing 30’, which apparently means that I should be clawing my way into the heart of any available gentleman in the desperate hope that he fertilises my rapidly-dwindling stash of eggs so I can spit out a child or two to give my parents something to coo over.

This isn’t going to happen. Perhaps, years into the future, I’ll change my mind. But for now, the thought of getting pregnant brings me out in a cold, terrified sweat and makes me want to hug close to me all the things I love – my independence, my freedom, my time alone, my beautiful flat with all the things in it that aren’t covered in sick and dribble, and – perhaps most of all – my goddamn money.

I don’t care if time’s running out. Time’s also running out for me to retrain as a barrister or shag John McCririck. I’m not going to rush to do either of these things – they are undesirable things to do, and they aren’t going to become any more desirable just because there’s a limited time in which to do them.

Love hurts

My final and perhaps most important reason for staying single: love hurts. A relationship is the all-or-nothing option. You give everything you have to someone who has the power to destroy the lot on a whim.

If you’re in a relationship, then I’m impressed. You’re willing to lay your heart out on the chopping-block of their affections and trust them not to pound it into a miserable, bloody slab of pain.

At least when I’m single I know that my misery is my own. If I’m wretched it’s because I’ve made myself so, and I’m probably in a reasonable position to fix whatever’s wrong. But in a relationship it’s possible for someone else to make a decision that brings your whole world crashing down around you.

When I wake up in the morning I feel safe knowing that the only person with the power to destroy me is me.

Even given a multiverse of infinite worlds I still struggle to comprehend a possible one in which I could give less of a shit about your kids.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish no harm upon your – or indeed anyone else’s – children. It’s just that given the choice I’d rather you didn’t tell me about them in unrelenting, tedious detail.

I know single parent dating is hard, but this rule applies most emphatically, to those guys that I fuck.

Why? Well, kids just aren’t sexy. Your ability to raise offspring, while no doubt held in great regard by some women, has no bearing whatsoever on my own affections towards you.

Talk about them if you like – I’m aware that in the cacophonous mêlée of your life you may well need to vent about certain things. Feel free to mention them, tell me how precocious and cute they are, or regale me with an amusing anecdote involving the time one of them said something so adorable it made everyone at that family wedding spew Cava through their nose in a spontaneous gesture of delighted amusement: just don’t bang on and on about them as if they’re the only interesting thing about you.

I highly doubt I’ll ever have kids, and if I do I’m sure the world will not be big enough to contain the gigantic flying fuck that I’m willing to give about them. My kids will be as special to me as yours, no doubt, are to you. But right now, please don’t expect me to care.

Further, please understand that too much child-based conversation could seriously hinder my ability to find you attractive. Yes, you are virile and strong and manly: your sperm has been biologically successful on at least one occasion. But that does not impress me. If you can shoot it over your shoulder I’ll be impressed. Hit a bullseye at 20 paces and I’ll fawn in gushing admiration. Dribble it into a woman? Not so much.

Your reminder that sex produces small, vomiting, expensive packets of noise actually has a similar effect on me to the effect that it might have on you if I were to mention castration: it kills the mood. It reminds me that there are horrible, awful, cunt-ripping things that can happen to me as a result of our sweaty, joyful union. And those are things that, believe it or not, make me dry up faster than you can say “episiotomy“.

Again, I will restate for the people who will have skimmed over my original disclaimer: I wish no harm upon your kids. I’m not anti-child. I appreciate that in order for our race to exist beyond the next generation we do need some of these creatures.

So I don’t hate kids. Parents I know assure me patronizingly that I’ll definitely want one some day, and at that moment I’ll understand the soaring joy of having them. I will one day realise that it’s all worthwhile – giving up my social life, burying myself in shit and vomit, spending all my cash on ridiculous buggies and toys that make animal noises when you drop-kick them across the kitchen, etc.

They’re right, of course, one day I may well want a small girlonthenet so I can train her to continue my glorious works. But in the meantime, as I have no kids, I have no opinions to contribute to this conversation about yours. Even if I did have opinions, you probably wouldn’t want me to contribute them.

Usually a conversation consists of one person talking about something and the other chipping in with an opinion or a story of their own. Sadly I have few appropriate child-based stories of my own and lack of experience means my opinions are worthless to you.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve offered a suggestion to a parent on how to deal with the toddler-based problem they have just told me about, only to be greeted with “you wouldn’t understand, you’re not a parent.”

Well no, demonstrably I’m not. And so you talking about your kids is a pretty one-sided conversation. A one-sided conversation that leaves me slightly bored, occasionally belittled and deeply unaroused.

Look – children can be very cute sometimes. They’re a bit like small versions of adults, but more stupid, which means they say funny things and have cute tiny hands and wear outrageous clothes and beg for ice-cream and all that jazz. They have toys that I pretend I don’t want to play with but secretly quite enjoy (train sets and Play-doh: fuck yeah) and they do tend to liven up otherwise tedious family gatherings.

So I don’t hate kids, and if you’re a boy I’m fucking I certainly don’t hate your kids – I just don’t want to be engaged in a long discussion about them. Just as you’re probably deeply disinterested in the minutiae of the strategy meeting that I had today at work, I am not interested in the minutiae of tiny lives you nurture when you’re somewhere far from me.

Your kids are fine – I don’t hate them. On the contrary I wish them health, wealth, happiness, success, and a long life followed by a noble exit. I just wish they’d do it fucking quietly.