As a proud member of Generation Childless, let me tell you exactly why I don't have kids yet

I don’t know who I am or what I want. And I'm not prepared to have a child until I've worked that out - no matter which media outlet brands me "selfish" for failing to procreate

I'm not ready to give away all my 'me time' (Getty Images/AFP)

I’m an emotional wasteland. I think I cried twice in the whole of last year (including when a relative died) and I identify heavily with the moment in The OC when Marissa tells Ryan, “I love you” and he replies, “Thank you” (with Ryan, that is). If I didn’t bleed or bruise I would assume I was actually a robot. I am in no way emotionally equipped to process having a child.

I am selfish. I am just learning to accommodate the presence of my boyfriend in my life (and we’ve been together for three years) and if I was down to my last £10 I’d likely spend it on ELLE and Cadbury’s Caramel Eggs.

I’m aggressively, fiercely loyal to the family I was born into, but I don’t feel like I’m quite ready to put the needs of someone else before mine yet, especially if I have a large part of the power in making them exist. But you know what I’m not selfish enough to do? Bring a child into the world when I am not in a state to devote 100 per cent of myself to raising them properly while keeping a firm-ish grip on my own self-worth and sanity.

I’m poor. See point above; I’m not actually remotely poor by real world standards, but from what I can gather children are BLOODY EXPENSIVE and – see point above – I’m not in a place where I’m ready to divert a large part of my unmarried person income to caring for a tiny version of me. (Especially if, like me, they’re an ungrateful prick.)

And in truth I am terrified of bringing a child into the world that I wouldn’t be able to give the same start my five-star, brilliant, force-of-nature model parents gave me. I had a fantastic upbringing and wanted for nothing. My boyfriend and I have both agreed – despite our separate backgrounds – that, should we ever be mad enough to procreate, this would be the thing that we want to be able to do most. And we just aren’t there yet.

I just like my own god-darned free time too much. If you were to ask me to describe my perfect weekend (my realistic one, as opposed to being trapped in Selfridges, escaping and then being trapped in The Ritz with no-one but Joe Manganiello for company) it would involve no other people than myself, the great outdoors, Netflix, Caramel Eggs and the gym.

I love time alone. Having a constant demand on my time is going to be an adjustment and a sacrifice I’m not yet prepared to make. But when I do want to share my every moment with a tiny version of me, I can’t wait to show them the world I know and to have them show it to me with new eyes.

I don’t know who I am and what I want and I’ve not done it yet. Despite my steady march towards the big 3-0, I honestly think I know less about myself now than I did when I was 12.

Young adulthood, the early years of a career, buying your first home, trying to convert a boyfriend into a life partner - these are all hard enough adaptations to make without adding (in the majestic words of Mila Kunis) “a love goblin” to the mix.

With a ticking biological clock and the sad (but in no way pressuring) observation from my mother that she always thought she’d be a grandmother by now on one side - and a boyfriend convinced that “35 with two kids” is just something that you wake up and discover has happened, like Christmas morning or the council tax bill, on the other - I’m going to stick in the middle and sort my own head out.

And maybe by the time I’ve done that I’ll have just a few viable eggs left to give this whole parenthood thing a crack.

Am I naïve? Am I clueless? If you think I am, congratulations. You’ve just proved why I’d make a terrible parent right now.