I’m sick of parent smugness towards people who don’t have kids ...Middle East

If there is one phrase that anyone without kids cannot stand, it is “as a parent…” It is like nails down a blackboard to me. I actually think it’s worse than “you don’t know love until you become a mother” and “it’s not too late yet!”. I hate it because it leverages a faux moral superiority over us childless monsters who presumably lack the emotional range of parents.

But most of all, I hate it because it pulls up the drawbridge and is part of a much wider narrative: that people don’t have children because they don’t like them and don’t want to be around them, and therefore must be selfish and narcissistic individuals who only care for themselves.

The figure of the childfree woman looms large in our collective cultural history, and she is rarely positive. Take Hollywood, for example. Show me a single woman on celluloid who doesn’t want kids, and I will show you a stone-cold career bitch who would rather buy a Birkin bag than a baby bouncer. Think Cruella de Vil, Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones, and countless fairytale witches who take this trope one step further than simply disliking children and actually try to eat them.

Single men fare slightly better and are often shown to be smooth-talking Lotharios who are simply having too much fun to bother with children, which is rather ironic given the amount of time they spend engaging in an act that creates them. Either that or they are shown to be childless weirdos you would probably cross the street to avoid.

Much comedy has been derived from placing a child-free character in a setup where they must suddenly take care of an infant. Remember when Samantha Jones put a vibrator in a baby’s bouncer chair because the motor broke? Or when three men had to take care of a baby in the 80s? It was hilarious! Because people who don’t have kids don’t know how to take care of them, right? They are terrible with children because they are self-centred, pleasure-seeking individuals who lack the emotional bandwidth to nurture anything other than their skincare regime.

Well, as a single woman who doesn’t want kids, I’d like to say f**k all the way off, and when you get there, please f**k off some more. Of all the stigmas that accompany not wanting children (and there are many), this is the one that upsets me the most. Just because someone doesn’t want to be a full-time parent doesn’t mean that they aren’t good with children or aren’t to be trusted with them.

I happen to be brilliant with kids, especially the little ones. They love me! I dress like a children’s TV presenter most of the time and my curly hair is reminiscent of one of the Cabbage Patch Kids: of course, they love me! What’s more, I genuinely enjoy spending time with the tinies. I find them to be a fabulous distraction because their worldview is so gloriously simple. No five-year-old cares about your writing deadline or changes to the HMRC tax system because there are forts to be built and mad questions to be asked. How can anyone stay in a bad mood when a toddler is laughing hysterically at a spoon?

I have lots of children in my life, and you better believe I go all in when it comes to my “auntie” duties. Most of my close family and friends who have kids do not make me feel like an outsider when it comes to childcare. But every once in a while, that old stigma will raise its head, and it always hurts my feelings.

It happened the other day when a friend was telling me a story about being in a childcare emergency. When I asked them why they ended up paying for childcare instead of sending me a text, they actually laughed. “Yeah, right!” she started, before realising I was serious and trying to backtrack. It genuinely hadn’t popped into her head that I was even an option. For context, she does remember to ask me to water her cheese plant when she is away.

I’ve even had people who should have known better making jokes about how terrible I would be as a babysitter because I don’t have any kids and I write about sex for a living. I understand there is an incongruity about leaving children with a sexologist, but surely no one thinks I’d actually read them the Kama Sutra as a bedtime story. I confess I was rather upset by the mockery which the very idea of leaving children with me elicited. Did they really think I was that irresponsible just because I wasn’t in the parent club? This was made all the worse, given that I once witnessed that particular mother eating a bag of drugs she found on the floor at a festival.

I hate to say it, but parents often develop a smugness towards their friends who don’t have children. Even those closest to you will start to begin sentences with the dreaded phrase, “as a mother,” when commenting on various social issues and say things like “since having children, I just can’t watch the Oxfam ads anymore.” As if anyone without kids is watching footage of babies starving with popcorn and a giant foam finger. I promise you, we do understand that babies dying is sad. It’s all unbelievably condescending. You’ve had a baby, you haven’t become one with The Force.

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In my experience, parents often flock together and frequently exclude friends who don’t have kids. Maybe they think we would be bored or that we simply don’t “get it,” but either way, knock it off! Please stop treating your child-free friends like they are the walking embodiment of stranger danger. I do understand that parenting is a steep learning curve, but don’t assume your child-free friends aren’t up to the task. After all, all new parents must learn how to do it. The hospital lets brand new parents take babies home all the time, despite them having only ever looked after house plants before. So don’t assume your childfree friends won’t be able to do it too.

I actually think childfree friends make the best babysitters precisely because we don’t know about nap schedules, screentime limits, and sensible snacks. We are fun and come armed with whimsy and wine in a bag. But most of all, don’t assume that we don’t like kids and don’t enjoy being around them just because we don’t have any of our own. It’s a cheap shot and often quite hurtful.Unless I actually take to living in a gingerbread cottage in the woods, I promise you can safely leave your children with me.

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