AUTHOR Lollie Barr tells her story of why she does not have any children to Sunday Style.

I AM blessed with amazing nipples.

Seriously, the bullets I’m packing in my bra could take an eye out.

Yet my magnificent areolae will never get to fulfil their intended purpose of feeding a baby. At the height of my self-induced baby panic, this realisation was devastating.

While many of my girlfriends from my suburban Sydney high school were having children in their twenties, I led a rather more unconventional life out in the world — working with rock stars, meditating with holy men in India, partying with aristocracy in England, interviewing celebrities, playing in bands and getting sent on travel writing assignments across the planet.

While I never had an overwhelming desire to have children, like most women, I happily assumed it would ultimately just happen.

It’s the way life is supposed to unfold, isn’t it? You meet a man and then eventually, either by design or by accident, you have a family.

Yet, like the one in four Australian women who will never have children, my life didn’t turn out that way.

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After basing myself out of London for 10 years, my eight-year relationship broke down.

I came home to Australia at 36, sure in the fact I’d meet somebody else and settle down.

I moved into a house I’d bought in Mullumbimby, NSW, wrote a novel, and waited.

Three years later, with no man on the horizon, came the first creeping doubts about my life choices. I looked into freezing my eggs, but I was even too late for that.

I recall speaking to my younger brother, Dan, now a father of four, his children his proudest achievement in his life.

“Have I really screwed up my life?” I asked him as baby panic gripped me. “You know, by not having children?”

“You’ve had an amazing life!” he offered in support. “You’ve packed more into it so far than most people do in a lifetime.”

By the time I hit 40, despite my “amazing life”, with my birthday came a full-blown midlife crisis: I was alone and childless.

That year, seven of my girlfriends were expecting babies.

Although the biology was simple, falling pregnant seemed like life’s greatest mystery.

“Why does it happen to everyone else but not me?” I asked my mother, who had never put any pressure on me to settle down.

She was proud of the life I had created.

“Perhaps it’s just not your destiny,” she replied philosophically. “Maybe you’ve got a different purpose in life, like writing your books.”

“I probably had 12 kids in my last life and need a break!” I joked, despite the fact that a deep sadness was starting to settle over me.

Rather than purely a biological urge to be a mother, I also didn’t want to miss out on the experience so fundamental to the human species.

Besides, if I wasn’t a mother, then I’d never be a grandmother.

Who would I end up being?

At 41, after undertaking therapy to deal with the depression that came with the baby panic, I came to the realisation that I had two choices: I could discount everything I’d achieved in my life and become bitter (not an option), or make the most of the freedom I had been afforded.

I chose the latter and moved to Melbourne, ready to embrace my life again.

On the drive down, I stayed with a friend’s mother.

She invited a couple who had been together for 35 years over to dinner.

When the female guest found out I was childless, she looked at me, pity etched on her face.

“In my opinion, it’s an absolute tragedy that a lovely girl like you isn’t married or has children,” she said, despite the fact I hadn’t asked for her opinion.

While not having kids may be an anomaly, it’s bushfires and plane crashes that are tragedies.

I tried to placate her with my exciting plans and news that my recently published first novel had been short-listed for a major literary prize, but that meant nothing.

In her eyes, I had failed at the most venerated thing to do in life: have sex and catch a case of the babies.

Most child-free women are constantly forced to justify why they are child-free — to their family, friends, work colleagues, even to strangers.

Yet often there’s not a straight answer to this question.

For some, it’s a conscious decision; for others, it’s an issue with infertility, or their partner’s fertility.

But, for the majority of my child-free friends, it’s just the way life turned out. According to a study in Australia’s Journal of Population Health, many childless women in their thirties want to have children but can’t due to reasons “beyond their control”, such as not having a partner, a stable relationship or a partner who wants children.

Yet there’s still a stigma, a pressure that comes from society at large, because we failed to meet the membership requirements to join the procreation club.

Nowadays, parenthood has become so lionised that those of us who don’t have children are often derided as selfish, individualistic or thought not to have grown up.

Julia Gillard was a prime example of this.

Despite being the country’s leader, she was still accused of being “deliberately barren” or, as Senator George Brandis put it, “She has chosen not to be a parent … she is very much a one-dimensional person.”

“It’s because we measure women by how well they mother,” explains Dr Bronwyn Harman, a psychology lecturer from Edith Cowan University who has studied happiness in child-free women and mothers.

“So, if they don’t mother, how do we measure them? The stigma is tied in with the idea that mothering is ‘instinctive’; that we instinctively know what our babies want and if we don’t, we’re a bad mother.

“Probably the only thing worse for a woman, next to being a bad mother, is not to be a mother.”

And despite the stereotypes, being child-free doesn’t mean sitting in parks forlornly staring at little tykes running their mothers ragged and regretting our lives.

Just ask Oprah Winfrey, Kylie Minogue, Helen Mirren, Cameron Diaz or Renée Zellweger, who live fulfilled, interesting, creative lives.

Are they living out their existence regretting the children they’ve never had?

If they’re anything like me, I doubt it.

Being child-free means you’re free to explore other options.

I fill my life with friends, family, art, literature, philosophy and travel.

My path led from Melbourne to living in Paris, Stockholm and eventually Berlin, where I initially came to write a travel feature and then, being unburdened by commitment, decided to stay.

I have since written two new novels, one of them a children’s book.

Despite not being a mother, I have a natural affinity with children. They gravitate to me as they sense that I’m a grown-up but, because I’m not a parent, I’m immensely relatable.

I’m Auntie Lollie to my nieces and nephews, as well as many of my friends’ kids around the world.

I have nothing but admiration for my friends who are parents, for the amount of care, love and diligence they invest in their children’s lives.

They may on occasion look on with envy at my freedom, but they’d never swap their lives for mine, despite the life I lead.

However, I’m now at a place where I wouldn’t swap with them, either.

Life is as it is and the only thing you control is how you react to your circumstances.

If I really wanted kids, I would have had them.

I didn’t, so now I choose to live the best life I possibly can.

I’m happy, and that’s the main thing.

“I don’t have kids either, but I’m happy”

Shelley Smith, 42, from Brisbane

“At 40, I decided to embrace the freedom I enjoy in my life and to invest in myself and contribute to my future happiness.

I had my teeth straightened, booked an overseas holiday and made a commitment to embark on an MBA journey the following year.

My biggest achievement has been balancing my studies with work and successfully securing a six-month career break studying in Denmark.

This wonderful gift will always be with me, and I have experienced incredible personal growth and contentment as a result.

I plan to keep travelling and exploring whatever opportunities open before me.”

Leanne van Opijnen 42, from Melbourne

“I physically can’t have children and I have an understanding boyfriend, who’s on this path with me.

He’s younger than me. I do sometimes wonder if his caveman instincts will kick in and make him unhappy in our childless relationship. I hope not.

When I compare myself to close friends around me that have children, it’s a 50/50 situation. Sometimes I feel sad that I’ll never have what they do, other times I’m happy to walk away and

feel glad I’m not a mum.

I love that I can do whatever I want, when I want.

I can travel, spend money on myself and be selfish with my time.

My greatest achievements are working hard, getting promotions, buying my second property and keeping a tight-knit friendship group.

I’m godmother to my male best friend’s daughter and I absolutely adore her.

I’d fight for her, if anything ever happened to them.”

Lollie Barr’s children’s book, The Adventures of Stunt Boy and His Amazing Wonder Dog Blindfold (Pan Macmillan, $14.99), is out on April 1.

Follow Lollie on Twitter @lolliebarr

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