I really don't know if I ever want to have children. Those little creatures that have dried trails of snot that extend from their nose to their top lip, and if one is exceptionally gifted that trail of snot continues across the side of their face and all the way down to the sleeve of their school jacket. You know the ones right?

Children. Those little creatures that begin life as little more than an elementary feeding tube... food goes in one end, and out the other. Clean and repeat. If you are unfortunate, those children will still need cleaning well through until the age of 6 or 7. Then eventually they hit the teenage years where they suck money like air, and if they are male, still need to be reminded on a regular basis that cleansing and personal hygene are not optional components of ones day to day life. If they are female they need to be reminded that a hand towel and 2 kilo's of make up does not constitute an outfit.

And then there is the cost... apparently the overall costs for raising a child in todays Australia is around $1 million. One million dollars for a child. Seems a little steep to me, especially since I am a child in a family of six kids, and there is no way in the good lords green earth that we had one million dollars spent on each of us. I mean, for the first 4 years of my life I received nothing but coal from Santa Claus on Christmas morning. All my clothes were second hand from the neighbors. I was forced to wear second hand school shoes that had the soles worn down on a strange angle by the kid next door who walked funny, and when I wore them my knees hurt when I walked to school each day. We were not $1 million children. But apparently one million is the average.

Now lets look at this rationally, do children really bring $1 million dollars worth of joy and happiness to the lives of the sleep deprived parents? Mothers, is the joy of being woken up at 3am by the screeching of a child - to change a filthy nappy that smells like death, and then feeding the afformentioned child, which for the life of me I imagine would feel like having a rodent chewing on your nipple, only to have that same child vomit said breastmilk down your back - really worth one million dollars? Is it really worth having children? I often tell my parents they should have stopped after me... I mean, I was the perfect model child, and you can't improve on perfect.

I think not. It is either a child, or an investment property and the ability to retire to the highlands of NZ on your own winery estate. A family and a mini-bus, or childless and a Porsche. At least you won't find crushed cookies mashed into your leather upholstery. Hmm... it really is a tough choice.

Still, little children can be cute, and even as a male I get all 'maternal' - and I know that term refers to females - when I see little babies wrapped up in their little sheeps wool blankets. Sure they smell and make too much noise and cost ridiculous amounts of money, but when I die, I'm pretty sure that no matter how expensive my car is, it won't miss me. Like a true hussy it will simply move on to the next cashed up old man. Children and family just might miss me a little. Might.

What is measured in monetary investment terms nowdays anyway? How can you not know that you are onto a winning investment when you catch your little sister sleeping with a tissue stuffed up her nose to stop the snot flowing onto her mothers pillow? Laughing at her distraut little face as she carries around a dead frog. Wincing in pain as she shows me that she learnt how to "punch boys in their privates". That stuff is priceless.

Besides, if I don't have children, who will be left to fight it out over my inheritance, just to find out that I have spent it all on jacuzzis and cocktails in the nursing home huh? I guess despite the pricetag and the sacrifices, children are family and are therefore a good investment. Having said all that I will let you in on a little secret I learned over the past year, that might save you a lot of trouble and effort.

Children would be much easier to flush if they were fish.