I won't be shamed into being a mum

After all the children were ­be-hatted and wellied, she smiled smugly and told me: “I bet you couldn’t do this.”

The implication being that because I don’t have children I was utterly useless and incompetent, whereas Supermum held the Mother Courage trump card of capability and self-sacrifice.

No wonder I uttered a small “hurrah!” when I read last week that ­actress Cameron Diaz had said: “I think women are afraid to say that they don’t want children ­because they’re ­going to get shunned,” adding that there were ­already enough children in the world.

Cameron also said that she hadn’t decided not to have children but was keeping an open mind. “I never say never. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

I feel the same way although our circumstances are slightly different. I am not a hot blonde ­superstar and I also have a few years on La Diaz, who, at 36, probably has a few more child-bearing years ahead of her than I do.

I’ve always thought that I’d have liked to have been a parent but have sadly never met a chap who ­wanted to have them with me.

As I get older, I do feel sad about this but as the relationship was always the key thing for me, I’m not going to be heading off in the direction of a ­fertility clinic and ­single parenthood.

Like Cameron, I also seem to have more friends nowadays who don’t have children than who do. In my case, I have veered away from the kind of parent who has sneered that because I don’t have children, I “don’t know what love really is”.

No, I don’t know what it’s like to feel that all-encompassing adoration and protection of a small ­human being that’s part of you but please don’t negate all the feelings, passions and cares that I have because I’m not a mum.

They’re just different and ­because they’re different it means that I can have a fantastic relationship with the children of friends who don’t insist that I’m not to be pitied and who don’t push their offspring’s wonderfulness upon me.

These are the sort of parents who drop their childless friends because “they don’t understand how demanding parenthood is” and swap you for new chums they met at antenatal class. Thanks.

However, I am really lucky to know lots of non-judgmental ­parents and their rather fabulous offspring who I really love to spend time with because I really, really like them as people, and not just because Mum and Dad tell me how wonderful they are.

Us childless singletons aren’t, of course, the only women who are made to feel odd if we don’t reproduce.

As soon as a couple marry, the implication is that they’ll soon be starting a family and if children don’t start to ­appear in a few years, some relatives will start commenting that “they’re clearly a bit selfish; they’d rather have all those fancy holidays and a flash house than a baby”.

That’s because it’s their choice, which is what the past 40-odd years of feminism have been about and don’t forget, some men want to remain childless, too.

Motherhood is important, arguably more so now than ever as families break down, but no ­woman should ever be judged or pitied because she’s not a parent.

I always think that because I’m single I take very ­little from the welfare state yet happily contribute a lot via taxes towards the welfare of other people’s children. I’m doing my bit.

So please don’t think Cameron and I are strange or to be pitied. We still have the full range of emotions, being empathetic and loving, and are capable of looking after others, even putting on a pair of tiny wellingtons.

Oh, and as my pal who’s a mum of two brilliant boys that I love very much pointed out, I look a lot younger than people who do have children.

Well, there have to be some advantages…