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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good ovary must be in want of a baby.

Gentle readers, now that I am almost 31 years old, an old horse so to speak, my GP really brought this message home on a visit shortly after my 30th birthday.

She told me that, simply because I was now 30, and ‘hadn’t changed my sexual partner for 8 years’, I should ‘take a calendar home’ to my boyfriend and decide ‘when we will have a baby’.Several things spring to mind. Firstly, my flat does not have iron barred windows and doors and therefore provides too many dangerous escape routes for a man being confronted by a diary and happily pulsating ovaries.Secondly, I am not convinced. All evidence points to the fact that having a baby is an unwise decision that ends in alcoholism, heart-break and lower back problems.

I am also not convinced I want to join the PMM (Patronising Mother Mafia) just yet. ‘Don’t you WANT a baby?’, the PMM asks, as if I have some sort of intrinsic human flaw, whilst also telling me ‘I felt like a whale on steroids!’, ‘I couldn't cut my toenails for months!’, ‘I was a schizoid freak and shot some peeps at Coles!’, when describing the joys of pregnancy. You’re not SELLING it to me, people.

My sister, who is now pregnant herself, but who is also an award-winning, super-sleuth medical doctor, informed me that childbirth was like being in a, quote, sausage-kitchen.

After her first day in the maternity ward, she grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my back and made me swear that I would never, ever attend anyone's childbirth unless said children were my own.

When my friend had a baby at 24 and I made the fatal error of visiting her soon after the birth, the sweaty, crazed woman in the hospital gown looked much more like a combination of Heathcliffe’s Cathy and a cow being taken to the slaughterhouse than a glowingly happy new mother.

‘Don't ever do this! Promise me!’ she screamed insanely. ‘The baby shot out in under two hours and tore me to shreds! That night, I rocked myself to sleep muttering the soothing incantation ‘Caesarean, Caesarean, Caesarean’.

I’ve watched many parents mutate into chain-smoking, angry freaks who recommend never reproducing to you as they strap their toddler to the supermarket trolley with an industrial strength gaffer tape.

‘You will never have time for yourself again!’ they say and point sadly at the tomato stains on their once pristine garb.

By the time children are in school, their parents are toasting the perpetual state of domestic chaos, lack of edible food in the fridge, bad-taste DVD collections and faulty electrical equipment in the home with copious alcoholic beverages (I can see the advantage of that, but I can also see the advantage of drinking in a Tahitian beach condo while the radio plays Just the Two of Us).

By the time children leave school and escape overseas, parents turn into desperate empty-nesters, whinging on about how their ungrateful babies have abandoned them. Family tension of beyond-Freudian proportions unravel and uncomfortable reunions see children abuse drugs while parents can barely hold back their tears over the shocking betrayal of faith and parental love. The situation is only alleviated when grandchildren are produced. And the cycle begins again.

However, and there we come to the crux of my problem with having children, I have never really met an unlikeable child in my life - quite the opposite. I have met the most delightful toddler in the world. Every time she counts to three or says weird things like ‘I love this horse’, my uterus starts glowing and I come dangerously close to stealing her (only her mother is one of my best friends, and she'd totally figure it out). I have a delightful goddaughter who has a twisted sense of humour and likes to eat Parma ham. My boyfriend has an awesome niece who gave me a letter which contains a drawing of me looking like Darth Vader and reads ‘Dear Tini Heart Ya So Much Heart Is The Best’ (I agree with that!) and an awesome step-nephew who says things I don't understand (for they are beyond my understanding of things) and an awesome step-niece who told me I look like a lollipop and have ‘squishy bits’. These are all reasons why I should reproduce.

I don't even think it would be so difficult to convince my boyfriend (if you don't know him, he is like the guy from High Fidelity coupled with JD from Scrubs, only more ginger) to reproduce along with me. I’d merely explain that:

1. A toddler's head is just the right height to park your Wii remote while you sip some water and stretch your clacks.

2. Infants like video games.

3. Don't you get it? CONSTANT VIDEO GAME PLAYING COMPANION.

4. Ok. The constant video game playing companion will be WORSE at it than you. At least for a few years. Epic win!

5. You can put infants on your belly. Their warmth will aide digestion.

6. What have you been saving all these shoeboxes for?

7. Think of high tech titanium social-networking-enabled baby monitors. Think of the fun applications for your iPhone - Burp 2.0, Poopfinder... the possibilities are endless.

8. Pass on the ginger gene and ensure it won't die out. Kapow, Mendel! Kick yo ass.

9. Guaranteed lollies, video games and Pixar movies in the house for at least 16 years.

10. My ovaries have watched Kill Bill

But… I have met hundreds of unlikeable parents who seem to dislike their kids. They put me off having children, for fear of turning into one of them.

But what do you do in order not to become one of those parents? The kind of parents who call their children Anastasia and Helvetica, indulging their every wish and failing to set boundaries, the kind of parents who yell at children for making noise, the kind of parents who will plonk them in front of the computer rather than taking them outside, not allow them to have any pets and forget how to have fun.

What will the boyfriend and I do when we drag our future babies from Australia to Europe and back, trying to figure out where we want to live? Will they be attacked in school for being ginger, bilingual, book-loving nerds? Will I have time to care or will I be too drunk and obsessive-compulsive about the dirt on the floor and my marital issues? Will I lock myself into the toilet and crack open the champers and family-sized bottle of Prozac while the kids watch TV on their own and eat Kentucky Plastic Chicken?

We all know we have remarkably little understanding and compassion for our own parents – one day, when I might turn to my grown-up children at the end of a long life and tell them that Mummy never had much time for them because she was a little busy sorting out her own problems whilst staring at her own navel, they won’t be smiling understandingly.

They will tell me I was a shitty mother alright. Or send a postcard from Bali that reads U SUCK. CU L8ER. OR NOT. WHATEVAH.

I suppose there is every chance I will turn into one of those horrible parents. I just have to take comfort in the fact that there is no chance in hell my boyfriend will.

When he points to the stage of a theatre production and screams ‘oh my god, the stage is made of Daleks!’, proudly irons his Dr Who T-shirt, when I discover 16 empty packets of jellybeans in his pockets, hear him praise the benefits of eating Easymac and watch him buy a safe family-size Mazda instead of the Cortina he is so desperate for, I don't think I can never have children.

Quite the opposite, actually.

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