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If you’re a woman in your 30s and don’t have children, people often want to know why.

It’s something a woman is quizzed about her whole life – a little girl who says she doesn’t want babies is informed she will definitely change her mind when she gets older.

This continues through her teenage years and her 20s, and the first thing everyone wants to know if or when a wedding ring is slipped on her finger is when she’ll be delivering up her firstborn.

But once she reaches her mid 30s it’s no longer ‘when’ – it’s ‘why not?’

Nowhere is this scrutiny more intrusive than in the celebrity world.

The questioning childfree women over 30 have to face is painful to see. For them, the gossip mag countdown clock is ticking. ‘Is she isn’t she’ baby rumours swirl and, as time marches on, give way to speculation over what is really going on in this poor woman’s life.

Those that do consent to interviews are interrogated – and Jennifer Aniston seems to get the worst of it.

Google ‘Jennifer Aniston baby’ and you’ll get 2.5 million stories. That’s a lot of interest.

Under Google News, over the space of one week there are several stories about how she’s pregnant, using a surrogate, how she’s not pregnant, she’s not adopting, and she’s not using a surrogate.

The top story is about how she’s sick of pregnancy rumours. I bet she is!

Last year she told Marie Claire: “I have worked too hard in this life and this career to be whittled down to a sad, childless human.”

I loved the chapter in Caitlin Moran’s book, How To Be A Woman, called Why You Shouldn’t Have Children.

She said: “While motherhood is an incredible vocation, it has no more inherent worth than a childless woman simply being who she is, to the utmost of her capabilities.

“To think otherwise betrays a belief that being a thinking, creative, productive, and fulfilled woman is, somehow, not enough. That no action will ever be the equal of giving birth.”

Viewing childfree-ness as anything but weird and sad can put you in the firing line for a lot of grief in life and on social media, as journalist Holly Brockwell found when she wrote about her childfree status. She was told she was selfish, incapable of love, she’d die alone, her existence was pointless – and not giving her parents grandchildren was ‘ungrateful.’

It’s baffling why anyone should care so much about someone else’s decision – unless they felt her choice said something about their own.

If we stopped demonising women who don’t want children, and stopped telling girls their lives were heading in a singular direction, I am willing to bet there would be a significant impact on the global population.

I’m happy for anyone with children – if it’s what you want, then great.

But it’s not for everyone. And there’s nothing wrong with that.