Prime Minister Julia Gillard has shrugged off questions about being unmarried and childless, saying she bears no regrets about the choices she has made.
Australia's first unmarried prime minister, Ms Gillard has been criticised in the past for lacking empathy for not having children, most notably by Liberal senator Bill Heffernan in 2007, who described her as being "deliberately barren".
But Ms Gillard told the Herald Sun that she wasn't hurt by Senator Heffernan's comments.
"I certainly never made a choice of work over family, or politics over family," she said earlier this week.
"I didn't make that choice but I made a set of choices along the way which added up to one big choice."
"I wasn't someone who in my teenage years or even in my 20s was saying the big thing I want to do in life is have kids."
Ms Gillard's mother Moira said having children was never one of Julia’s ambitions as a teenager.
"I think she was about 18, and she said, ‘I don't want children, Mum, I never want children,’" she said on Australian Story.
Ms Gillard has been in a long-term relationship with hairdresser Tim Mathieson.
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