“Oh, you’ll change your mind!” - it’s the chorus sung to every child-free person to have ever existed.

As someone who decided, in their early twenties, that having children of their own was not for them, I have now endured more than a decade of this (frankly infantilising) language. I have been called selfish for not wanting them; asked what else my purpose in life is if I do not have children; asked who will look after me when I am old; told that I cannot complain about being tired because there is nothing like parent tired; and, of course, “you’ll change your mind!”

Childlessness in the UK has increased by 50 per cent since 1990, with nearly a fifth of UK women having no children by the age of 45 according to the Office for National Statistics. We are clearly a growing demographic, for myriad reasons.

Related: Stop making assumptions about child-free teachers

Long read: What teachers who don’t have children want you to know

More from Caitlin McIntosh: ‘I just started a job in a school I can’t go to’

I consider myself “lucky” - I am child-free by choice. This is not a choice cruelly thrust upon me by infertility. But you cannot tell that by looking at me. I have worked with incredible, compassionate, knowledgeable childless teachers who face similar barbs, and who tell me it is like a punch to the gut every time. You would hope that knowledge of this fact alone would stop people immediately commenting on your lack of children. And yet...

My reasons for not wanting children of my own are many and varied. I am quite open about this and am well versed in dealing with such comments. A wee smile and a nod will often get the instigator to assume they have won me over and off they go. However, more recently I have begun to encounter a view levelled at educators without children that is somewhat more insidious: “You can’t possibly know what’s good for children as you have none of your own.”

Have just been told that I know nothing about children/ appropriate sex ed/ what is best for them because I do not have children myself. Child free/childless women - this will never end, will it?

- Mrs McIntosh (@MissMozDog) May 5, 2021

Having completed five years of university training and worked in full-time secondary education for 11 years, it is this comment about my lacking children that most enrages me. Most recently, an older male friend took umbrage with a view I shared about education. He particularly disagreed with me because unlike him, I am not a parent. He told me: “Nobody knows kids better than parents - you can’t talk about a child’s problems, not having one. It’s like taking driving lessons from a person without driving skills.”

This man is not the only one to have such views and use them to disparage educators. In taking to Twitter to vent my frustrations, other educators have told me of times parents have made comments like “you can tell the head doesn’t have children”, or aggressively asked at parents’ evenings if they have their own children because, if not, how dare the teacher comment on their child? (Of course, not all parents make these comments. I have been blessed with many incredibly supportive parents who work with you as partners in their child’s education).

But surely this is just the view of people outside education - those who do not see the extensive training we do, the experience we gain from daily interactions with a plethora of children? Sadly, no. In my own experience, other educators have been first to make such comments. I once had a colleague drunkenly berate me on a social night out for not completing my duty as a woman, asking how could I possibly expect to fully understand my students if I didn’t raise one myself? Another said: “I was like you once and I changed my mind. I am a better teacher now - you could be, too”.

Teachers who are parents no doubt have experiences from their parenting that can help inform and guide their teaching and beliefs. Their time management skills, for example, gained from juggling their own and their children’s schedules, can be invaluable. I personally do not know how they manage - especially not through the recent Covid lockdowns in being online teacher, home teacher, behaviour monitor and everything in between.

Child-free and childless teachers, however, bring different yet equally important qualities and experiences: the childless teacher who has soldiered on in the face of miscarriage and fertility treatments, and learned resilience like no other; or the child-free teacher who has been able to devote more time to dedicated pedagogical study and is able to support other staff to develop and improve, or who is more easily able to run extracurricular activities and trips.

Being child-free has not rid me of my compassion; I care deeply about my kids - the children in front of me in my class every day. I work hard to ensure I keep up with research to support my approach in the classroom, and to better support them to grow into confident, capable individuals. I will continue to fight for their rights, their education, and their safety.

I expect that my ability to do so, and that of countless other teachers, will only continue to grow in the coming decades - regardless of whether we end up having children.

Caitlin McIntosh is a faculty head at a secondary school in the Highlands of Scotland. She tweets @missmozdog