Have you met Peter Pan?

 There is a new breed of man on the dating scene. Have you met a Peter Pan yet? They are the lost boys who refuse to grow up. You will find them bopping away at the bar on a Saturday night well into their 40s, still wearing Converse and jeans to work and driving around in their mid-life-crisis convertibles.

A fondness for the Xbox and a habit of using the word dude in every sentence is not the problem with these juvenile delinquents. It's much worse: the eligible 30 to 40- year-old bachelors in this town date the 20-something handbags.

 A close friend of mine is a 30-something gal on the hunt for a man. As you all know, at her age the competition is rampant and her eggs are soon to be on ice. She is a cougar battling the kittens in a real-life Ashton Kutcher/Demi Moore Age of Love. For her, no longer does the role of attractive arm candy cut it.

 By 30 you have got to have substance to combat the crow's feet and personality to offset the sagging of your once-pert breasts. Even then you will struggle. The men don't want the liability of an ageing womb. Unfair, but true.

 Furiously my friend has asked me time and again - why would men bother with young girls who couldn't possibly match them on an emotional level? Sure their butts are higher, their skin smoother - but that isn't enough to satisfy, is it? Do they need an ego boost or is it childhood-lost complex? What my friends don't want to admit is that the 20-year-olds offer something a 30-year-old can't.

 Aside from perky assets, they have time on their side. Every man knows that if he meets a 35-year-old stunner, she has a few good years before she is going to want to have children. And if there is one thing we have learnt about this kidult generation of men, it's that there is no room for two babies in the relationship.

 There are 60-year-olds still scampering about in short pants in this town who think they can pull girls my age. It's this arrogance that annoys me the most. One such bachelor said dating 20-somethings was easier. They laugh at lame jokes, they are happy to go to Maccas drive-through for dinner and they think downing shots is totally awesome.

 They are complication free. This guy is 38 and single. But he is not panicked. Not desperate just yet. He knows he has at least 10 years to take a wife and in the meantime he is going to party as if it's 1999. Us women are just expected to wait on the shelf and hope we don't spoil before we are chosen. If the tables were turned and it was the men who bore children, things would be very different.

 They could be the ones sobbing into a box of tissues while we femmes took our sweet time to settle down. That sense of urgency that makes these Peters fly away would suddenly make sense to them. It is much tougher being a mature woman looking for love than it is for a man.

 But you can't live in Never Never Land forever, boys.