Celebrities have to put up with a lot of judgement about their lives. It's something they know - rightly or wrongly - is part of the job and the rewards are great, so let's face it, we don't always feel sorry for them.

But no one, famous or not, should put up with the kind of hurtful remark as Nicole Scherzinger had to in her interview with Wendy Williams recently.

The 37-year-old successful singer, model, presenter and dancer was insulted by a dinosaur of a chat show host who quite bluntly told her that she had wasted the last seven years of her life - by not having children with her ex-partner Lewis Hamilton.

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Tina Campanella says her dog Alfie completes her family unit with her happily child-free partner of ten years

Essentially she was told that everything she has achieved in her life so far means nothing because she hasn't procreated.

Not only was the comment a stinging insult to everything Nicole has achieved in her career, but it was ignorant and startlingly insensitive to her as a woman too.

Let's start with why it was insulting.

In our teens we're told we're over emotional, in our 20s we're sluts and now in our 30s if we aren't pushing out kids we're failures.

We've chosen our careers over our families, or we've not managed to make our relationships work and boy - are we going to regret it when we're lonely old husks, with shrivelled up wombs crying bitter tears for the rest of our pointless lives.

As we child-free women head towards the big 4-0 we know it's what people are thinking. But what's even more astonishing is that apparently it's okay to tell us.

Nicole Scherzinger was accused of wasting her seven-year relationship with Lewis Hamilton because they didn't have children, on a recent episode of the Wendy Williams show

Wendy Williams told Nicole that her on-off relationship with Lewis Hamilton is seven years of her life 'she won't get back' and that she had been 'rooting for her'

'Don't you want children then?'

'But what if you're lonely when you're older?'

'It's what we're all here for, isn't it?'

I'm 33, have been in a relationship for nearly a decade and I don't want children. I'm not a super-focused career woman, nor am I a party-loving city girl. Neither of which are bad things, by the way, it's just that these lifestyle choices are often 'blamed' for a female's apparently mystifying reason for not being a mother.

Instead I love long walks, watching movies and cooking big meals for family and friends. While I thrive on spending time with my friends I'm never happier than when I'm curled up on the sofa with a cuppa and a good book.

We have a three-year-old dog called Alfie who completes our family unit and never once have I thought there was a gap in our lives from not having children.

Don't get me wrong, I like kids. I have two incredible nieces who I've been proud to watch grow up. I've done countless school runs and been moved to tears by their turns in plays and concerts.

I've made jewellery at their birthday parties, baked them cakes, moved in when their parents have gone on holiday, and enjoyed every precious second I've spent with them.

If anything - God forbid - should happen to their parents, I would adopt them in a heartbeat.

Tina, who is 33 and has been in a relationship for ten years with boyfriend Russell doesn't want children

But I'm not desperate to have my own child and I shouldn't have to justify that. Besides the fact that I'm acutely aware that the world is already overpopulated and doesn't have the resources for every woman to continue having their own offspring ad infinitum, I just don't feel that urge, that pull that everyone talks about.

That insatiable hunger for a baby, a yearning so deep it's impossible to ignore, has never hit me like it has many of my friends.

For a long time I was fascinated by descriptions of this hormonal tug. I've waited for a powerful feeling to overcome me, to guide me unresisting and blissful towards the joys of parenthood. But there's no sign of it yet and I find it difficult to imagine it creeping up on me and changing my point of view so dramatically now.

Tina Campanella feels it is insulting to ask women when they are planning to have children

I'm not alone. My friend Sarah has had to end relationships in the past because her partners have wanted children and she doesn't. It was a difficult decision for her to make but I applaud her for not just having a child to please someone else - or because it's expected of her.

She's made a responsible decision not to embrace motherhood because it wouldn't be fair on the child. 'I just know I'd resent it for getting in the way of the life I want to lead,' she's bravely admitted to me in the past.

Georgia, a friend from childhood, never got on with her parents when she was a kid. Her mother says it was because she didn't enjoy being a parent.

'She loves me, but she's very open about the fact that she probably shouldn't have had me,' she told me.

Another friend, Lisa, is a successful artist in her mid-40s and also doesn't want children. She feels she's got enough kids in her life and has no desire for her own. 'I want my nieces to grow up knowing that they can be whoever and whatever they want to be and that includes whether they want to start a family,' she says.

None of these women are cold or unfeeling and neither am I. I'm very caring and, gulp, even maternal. When I play with my friends' children I invariably get told I'll make a great mother 'one day', followed by the obligatory warning: 'You better hurry up - that biological clock is ticking!'

How about celebrating what I am instead of what I'm not?

There are plenty of high profile women, like Tracey Emin and Helen Mirren, who feel the same.

'There comes a time when you hit your 40s and you haven't had children, that every time you go out, the subject will come up – people will ask you why you haven't had children. And I'll say, 'I don't want to have children', and then you have to explain it, or why you couldn't have them. It's very tedious,' she is quoted as saying.

Dame Helen is even blunter about her decision not to become a parent. 'I always did – and still do – value my freedom too highly,' she has commented.

Nicole Scherzinger is one of a rising number of women who are choosing to have children later in life, or to not have them at all. Research shows an increasing amount of men and women are choosing not to have them

Statistics from a 2013 study by the Office for National Statistics showed that around one in five women are now childless at the age of 45, compared to one in nine women belonging to the previous generation.

The study says that this recent rise in childlessness may be explained by a 'decline in women getting married, greater social acceptability of a child-free lifestyle, delaying having children until it's biologically too late, or the perceived costs and benefits of childbearing versus work and leisure activities.'

Pioneering British Sociologist Dr Catherine Hakim says it's time for our attitudes to change.

'Research shows that across the affluent Western world, a significant minority of men and women prefer not to have children. They have other life priorities and goals. The contraceptive revolution of the 1960s allowed women, for the first time in history, to choose not to have children, or to have small families of just two children, while remaining sexually active.

Not surprisingly, up to a quarter of women (and men) are now choosing to remain child-free. This is a fundamental social change, and it will take some time for our attitudes and values to adjust accordingly. Becoming a parent is no longer inevitable, it has become a choice people must make.'

Tina says that those who ask women when they will have children are ignorant to the personal circumstances that may be affecting their decisions, which could include illness or relationship problems

But enough about us unnatural, children-hating monsters, living unfulfilled wasted lives that we'll someday regret.

Suffice it to say it's our decision whether we want to have babies and it irritates us to be judged so openly because we don't have them.

Instead let's discuss why it's supremely ignorant to tell someone - anyone - they've wasted seven years of their lives by not having kids.

My decision to not have children is a pretty handy one really, because I can't have them. Or at least, it would be very long and painful process if I did decide to. I have a joint condition that needs fortnightly injections of a drug that precludes me from carrying a healthy child to full term.

In order to have children I would need to come off the medication for a significant period of time before I conceived, and then stay off it while I'm pregnant.

No thanks: I rather like being able to walk, hold a pen, type, eat properly and all the other things that would be excruciatingly painful if not impossible during that time.

Ah, I hear you sigh knowingly - that must be it. I must have convinced myself it's okay not to have kids because the reality is too upsetting to accept.

Sorry folks. Not true. It's a relief in some ways, because at least I have an excuse when people ask me over, and over, and over again why I'm not a mother yet.

I don't judge people for having children. I don't question their decision, or tell them they're wasting their lives on their offspring.

I don't talk about all the things they won't get to do because they're busy being parents. Being a mum is, I agree, what our bodies are designed to do. And I'm always overjoyed when my friends have kids.

But enough about us unnatural, children-hating monsters, living unfulfilled wasted lives that we'll someday regret

I'm also heartbroken when anyone I love struggles to conceive. Like my cousin, who suffered an agonising five miscarriages before she finally gave birth to the absolute light of her life that is her beautiful daughter.

Children bring joy. I have experienced that.

But it's astonishingly ignorant to ask a woman about the plans she has for her womb, because while she may agree with you that it was 'about time' she had kids, her body might not.

She may be coming to terms with the saddest truth of her life: that she may never have children. She may have just had a miscarriage. She might have just broken up with a long-term partner.

Maybe because she wanted them and he didn't. Any set of very personal circumstances could have led to the reason why she's not pushing a pram and quite frankly they're none of anyone else's business.

Wendy Williams' judgemental attitude towards such an incredibly successful woman as Scherzinger should make us all think about how we still view women through antiquated specs, despite how equal we're supposed to be in the Western world in 2015.

Some of us can't have children. Some of us won't have them. And others will have them when we're good and ready.