Not so long ago women without children, like me, were pitied. But now the world has caught on to the fact that, on the surface at least, we don't have such a hard life.
Take this week: I spent a few days on a friend's sailing boat in Italy, sun-bathing, drinking rose, talking, laughing and dancing until dawn.
Back at home after my break, I slept for hours, ate breakfast in bed, and stayed there reading until well after lunchtime. I couldn't be bothered to cook, so I went out for a Thai meal, bumped into a friend, went to the cinema and then out for drinks.
At the weekend, I stayed with friends with children in the countryside where I found money worries, toddler tantrums, conflicted step-parental relationships, and an all-consuming fractious energy caused by Mum and Dad having not slept more than five hours a night for months.
Unlike the child-free trip to Italy, where we drank for pleasure, this time wine was part of the coping process.
The children were lovely and polite - to me. But anyone could see that underneath the outward manners and helpfulness, Tolstoy's maxim applied: 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way'.
Earlier this week, a broadsheet newspaper ran a triumphalist piece by a 42-year-old who claimed she was wilfully and joyfully childfree. The writer was one of a growing number of women, she claimed, who believe having it all means not having a baby. I call them the Motherhood Deniers.
To an extent, that writer is right. Unburdened by motherhood and the personal sacrifice it requires, a woman can dedicate herself to her career and create a home with all the delicate ornaments, sumptuous fabrics and hard edges that have no place in a family environment.
Where a decade ago, just one in nine women remained childless at 45 and were considered rather peculiar at that, now that figure is closer to one in four. For women with a university education, like me, that figure rises to 43 per cent - an extraordinary figure which signifies a seismic social change.