<div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always">I&rsquo;ve never felt at all maternal. When I was little and my older cousins brought over their babies, I&rsquo;d be the only one begging not to hold them. It&rsquo;s not that I hated babies. I just didn&rsquo;t find them as cute and interesting as everyone else did. My parents weren&rsquo;t worried about it, mainly because they thought it was just a phase I&rsquo;d grow out of. I was just as sure that I wouldn&rsquo;t. <div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always">I was 20 when I met Dave, then 23, at a university party in 1997. It&rsquo;s fair to say it was love at first sight for both of us. So much so that after just six weeks, he got down on one knee and popped the question. It was only after I&rsquo;d said yes that I realised we needed to have &lsquo;the talk about children&rsquo; and the fact that I didn&rsquo;t want any. I had no idea what I would have done if he&rsquo;d said he definitely wanted children. I was shaking so much when I told him that I never wanted kids that I could barely get the words out.QUESTIONS He took my hand and told me he&rsquo;d been worried about how to break it to me that children had never figured in his plans and never would. I was so relieved that I burst into tears. We got married exactly three years later, in June 2000.We managed a year of wedded bliss before our friends and colleagues started pushing to know when we were going to start a family. When we explained that we weren&rsquo;t having children, they looked at us as if we&rsquo;d gone crazy, or like we were just being childish. Surely everyone wanted children? They brushed us off when we tried to explain that we didn&rsquo;t, and insisted we&rsquo;d change our minds. But it never happened, not even when Dave&rsquo;s sister started a family. I loved my nieces and loved spending time with them but it didn&rsquo;t make me feel even the tiniest bit broody or envious.<img src="https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1395484245/1647337817/articles/6231e2a750304/1647436065677.jpg" width="300" /><div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always">I saw how exhausted friends with babies were and how hard some of them found it to balance work commitments with childcare. Their lives revolved around mealtimes and sleep times and, later, the school run, and they never seemed to have any time for themselves. It was even worse when the children got older. They constantly needed to be taken here and there, and there&rsquo;s the constant worry about their safety. It made me more convinced than ever that it wasn&rsquo;t the life I wanted.<div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always">MISTAKEN ASSUMPTIONI liked being able to work long hours without feeling guilty, and I liked the freedom to drop everything and have a night out or a weekend away.People have actually called us selfish because, apparently, it&rsquo;s our duty to &lsquo;contribute&rsquo; to the planet by producing children, even though we all know how overpopulated the world is and that various countries are trying to convince the populace to have fewer children. It seems sexist because everyone assumes women want children and seem to think I&rsquo;m just going along with it to please Dave. Nothing could be further from the truth. My decision is a personal one based on who I am and how I view my life. I know that other people are fulfilled by being parents, but I know that has never been the case for me. I don&rsquo;t think that makes me a bad or a selfish person, just an honest one.

I'M CHILDFREE NOT CHILDLESS!

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