I am not a parent. Can I have some time off too?

As an empathetic human, many of whose best friends are parents, I can see how hard it is to combine work and children.

And as a woman, who might well come into possession of a child or two of my own, it seems glaringly obvious that things can't continue the way they are, with mothers scaling back careers at their peak and losing income when they need it most.

I am pretty convinced that the minute I do have children I'll leap to the other side of the fence. But for now, as a child-free, tax-paying member of the workforce, I can't help thinking Gordon Brown's new deal for parents means a raw deal for me.

Currently six million workers with children under six are eligible to request flexible working - which covers part-time hours and flexitime. The Government's proposals may include those whose offspring are up to 18, but even if they only take in parents of children under 12, there will be another 2.6 million workers seeking elastic hours. How will most employers ensure this happens? By making things less flexible for the rest of us.

It's not politically correct to voice it, but there is already a workplace apartheid. Just try taking a holiday-at half-term if you don't have school-age children. There are always a dozen more deserving cases ahead of you in the queue. And with Christmas rotas looming I predict yet more bad feeling before the year's out. My family never expect to see me at Christmas - when they do, it's a bonus.

The workplace battlefield used to be divided along gender lines, with men building up resentment for shouldering all those extra sick days and immovable chunks of time off taken by mothers. But now there's some equality in the bedroom, dads share the burden too, and it's those without kids who take up the slack.

Of course, in many ways the argument is academic. Only the public sector and certain progressive workplaces will grant flexible hours. A friend with good employers takes six weeks of leave in the summer and ships the family abroad. The rest of us can only dream of that - short of being signed off with stress.

And with people like me putting off childbearing till later in life, it's not just a case of working late and providing holiday cover for a few years when you're young. For a sizeable chunk of our working lives we get the thin end of the wedge when it comes to taking time off.

It's laudable what Gordon's doing for parents but don't those of us without children deserve a work/ life balance too? After all, when you lot are off spending time with your families, we're the ones left holding the baby.