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On 1 January, I take out my New Year Resolutions Book, open a fresh page and write at the top:

1. Give up IVF and do something big instead.

I love lists. I collect them like other people collect stamps. I keep my most prized lists in small colourful notebooks stacked carefully by the side of my bed. I’ve got lists of all the books I’ve read, all the films I’ve seen, all the countries I’ve visited. And this: my New Year Resolutions Book, which I write in ceremoniously each year.

I think for a moment and then add:

2. Achieve (and stay at) my target weight of just under ten stone.

This resolution is a making a repeat appearance. For someone who loves food as much as I do it’s a constant struggle. Some of the greatest moments of my life have involved me and a plate. But like many women I also long to be thin, so it goes on the list every year. And I do mean thin, not slim. Slim has always seemed to me to be on the slow slide to voluptuous – maybe it’s something to do with the curvature of the letter ‘S’ – and everyone knows that voluptuous is only a doughnut away from being fat. Quite what I would do about this perennial resolution if I did manage to get pregnant, I’m not sure. But welcome to my confused world, where success has been all about getting fat and staying thin.

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Since our supper before Christmas, I have been thinking a lot about women who have done something big with their lives, and on the afternoon of New Year’s Day I decide I’m going to start a new list: a list of twenty women who have changed the world. When I’ve done it I’m going to look up whether they had children or not. It’s like my own private game. The rules are that there will be no peeking until I’ve finished. It beats watching football on the telly.

In order to hone the list I have had to make a few decisions. First, I’ve decided that to make it on you’ve got to be dead. I’ve always thought those magazine articles and TV programmes detailing the ‘One hundred greatest something-or-others of all time’ are misleading because they often include people or things which are just fashionable. Right now, for example, you’ll find that Kate Middleton appears on a lot of lists of the most important women in history. I don’t want to make assumptions, but surely it’s a bit early to confer this status on her? Besides, she’s alive. I told you: alive people don’t count.

I’ve also decided to have different categories. By that I mean I’m not allowing myself too many women who’ve done the same sort of thing. When you start playing this game, you realise that there are so many more famous female political leaders and writers than there are, for example, composers and scientists. Arguably, those people who have made a mark in fields where women are under-represented have done something even more significant. Not that this list is about value judgements, but you’ve got to have criteria, otherwise how do you begin?

Oh, and there’s just one more thing before I do the big reveal: I’m allowing myself to include both Virginia Woolf and Frida Kahlo, even though I already know that neither of them had children. They would probably have made the list anyway – especially Frida Kahlo, as visual art is another area where there is a dearth of famous historical female figures. But as this is my list and I’m in charge, I’ve made the decision to give myself a golden hello. After all, I don’t want to find out that my list of top twenty women changed history and they were all mothers – that’s just not going to help my state of mind right now. I need at least a few women who I know I can rely on.

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By teatime the list is complete:

Writers

1. Sappho

2. Jane Austen

3. Virginia Woolf

Artists/Designers

4. Frida Kahlo

5. Coco Chanel

Composers/Musicians

6. Ella Fitzgerald

7. Édith Piaf

Actresses

8. Hepburn, Audrey and Katharine

9. Marilyn Monroe

World Leaders

10. Cleopatra

11. Boudicca

12. Joan of Arc

13. Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria

14. Margaret Thatcher

Political and Social Activists

15. Mary Wollstonecraft

16. Emmeline Pankhurst

Humanitarian Figures

17. Florence Nightingale

18. Mother Teresa

Scientists

19. Marie Curie

Cooks/Chefs

20. Isabella (Mrs) Beeton (well, the world’s got to eat!)

OK, I realise that there are a couple of cheats here: I’ve included two names at number eight, but as Katharine and Audrey regularly top best-ever actress lists and both share my surname, I’m going to take author’s ancestral licence and include them as a single entry (not that we’re directly related, but there must be some kind of link). And, yes, number thirteen, too, but if you’re going for a British royal, how do you choose between these two?

With the list complete, I start to research who had children. The good news is that my two cheats actually cancel each other out, so I don’t need to feel bad about those. Katharine Hepburn didn’t have children but Audrey did. Likewise, Elizabeth, the virgin queen, had none, and Victoria had nine. Sadly, I think I’m going to have to omit the ancient Greek writer Sappho – not from the list, per se, but from the statistics. Some sources say she had a daughter but so little is known about her life that’s it impossible to be sure. The fact that she is one of the first known ‘lesbians’ – she came from the island of Lesbos, the origin of the term – is irrelevant. It certainly doesn’t preclude the ability, desire or right to become a mother.

Also cancelling each other out, or at the very least making things complicated, are my two musicians. Ella Fitzgerald never had children herself but adopted her half-sister’s son, whom she named Ray Brown Jr after her husband and then gave to another of her sisters to bring up. And Édith Piaf did have a daughter, Marcelle, who was taken away from her as a baby and died of meningitis at just two years old.

So where does that leave me? Well, on the writer front, Jane Austen, like Virginia Woolf, never had children. And Coco Chanel, like Frida Kahlo, didn’t either. Nor did Marilyn Monroe. In terms of world leaders, Cleopatra did. In fact, sources say she had four, which bemuses me because I always think of her doomed love affair with Antony, which had no hope of any progeny. Boudicca (or Boadicea, as I was taught to call her) apparently had children too, despite her warring preoccupations. As did Margaret Thatcher (who had twins). But Joan of Arc, who was about nineteen when she died on that stake, was way too busy saving France and making sure she became a saint to think about motherhood. Mary Wollstonecraft and Emmeline Pankhurst, two of the leading figures in the women’s movement, both had children; in fact Mary died as a result of complications during the labour of her second child. But notably Florence Nightingale and Mother Teresa, who were arguably much more maternal figures, did not (although admittedly Mother Teresa was a nun). Marie Curie was a mother. So was Mrs Beeton. Of course she was. What else would you expect from such an archetypal homemaker – a mother of eight, she adopted her husband’s four children from his first marriage and then had four more of her own.

So the results are in. After I’ve eliminated the don’t-knows, the cancelled-outs and any other complications, I discover that over half of the women on my list didn’t have children. Given that the vast majority of women in the world do – and the percentage was even higher in the past – it’s a staggering statistic. In fact, on the basis of my list, you could go so far as to say that if you’re a woman and you’re going to do something big, you’re more likely than not to be childless.

For a moment I feel excited that I’m in such good company. But then I feel something else: a pain all too familiar. Because what I really want to know is whether it was enough for these women that they did something with their lives which has resonated for generations to come. Or did they, deep down, wish they had been mothers?