Perhaps I understood that idea once. Maybe there was a time, in my teens and early twenties, when I thought ''I am too much a child myself, how can I parent them?'' That kind of self-indulgence is not the usual reason why Australians choose not to parent. Now when someone tells me they don't have kids, I say: ''Oh, I'm so sorry.'' Two researchers tell me I have some rethinking to do. Harman's initial results were released last week - she thinks we are seeing explicit trends that society may not have accepted decades ago. Of the 330 respondents, a little more than three-quarters said they were childless by choice. About one-third of that number (about 70 of those surveyed) said they might have children later. Another third declared they did not feel parental - not maternal, not paternal (men were invited to respond to the survey, too). Of the remaining 70-odd participants, 40 thought children would ruin their lifestyle. Thought? A glance down the main thoroughfare of any suburban shopping centre will see women with clothes buttoned the wrong way, hair standing on end, vomit over their shoulder. Of course, that's only appearances - it gets worse.

There is nothing in the wallet. Nothing. Nothing except for a bunch of credit cards maxed out to the limit and three copies of Medicare cards all requested because it looked like they'd been lost. Then suddenly the cards appear like a flock of green geese in a section of your wallet you never knew existed. I guess you could call the hair, clothes, vomit thing ''ruining your lifestyle''. Or, say, forget the style part. In that wallet, the one with the green geese, there are sometimes receipts for items that are meant to be delivered to said Medicare office; they are like little magic blankets to save you from utter brokeness. (Folks, you should all know that this is going to disappear soon. Those lovely patient types behind the counter at Medicare will no longer dispense life-saving cash. You'll have to wait until it pops into your account. Which is great if you bank with the Commonwealth and sucks to be you if you bank with anyone else.) No wonder, seeing the world as it unfolds, you decide kids will ruin your lifestyle. Another 20 of the respondents thought it was a bad world to bring children into (who can argue? Babies born this year will arrive at a time when the chief executive of an iconic Australian company thinks it's OK to call the Prime Minister names. And fluoro is the new black.) But here's my favourite figure - and I'm surprised it is so low. Of those surveyed by Harman, 17 had an active dislike of children. And they were the ones who had them (sorry, that part's not true). Yes, nearly 7 per cent were childless because they hated kids. That's the best time to discover this important thing about yourself - and I've seen the unpretty results when it happens after parenthood.

The unfettered decision to remain childless is new, says US researcher and family therapist Cindy Nelson, whose work in this area was published earlier this year. Nelson conducted qualitative interviews with 15 childless couples. They were all over 50. They'd all been together for more than 20 years. These were people who were stable. Her subjects all had different paths to childlessness - but a majority view was this: they just didn't feel parental. They hadn't babysat as kids, they didn't play with dolls, they never saw themselves as parents; it just wasn't on their radar. Four of the women in her sample had decided to have tubal ligations before they were 30. They really didn't want kids. And boy, were they grateful: ''They saw themselves as fortunate, having been able to choose a lifestyle generations before them had largely been unable to do,'' Nelson says. Grateful and happy. So the message from Harman and Nelson is this: when you ask someone if they have kids and they say no, try not to respond with: ''Oh, I'm sorry.''

They may just respond by telling you how happy they are. How feminism made their lives possible. And by asking you a question of their own: ''Hey, do you know you have vomit on your shoulder?'' ■ Follow me on Twitter @jennaprice or email me jenna_p@bigpond.net.au