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Also noteworthy is that I don't project an opinion of selfishness on others; it's what I feel of myself. I can say also, now having a lot of friends that also waited for whatever reason, it's not uncommon in this cohort. It's also very common that people wait then run into fertility issues and the feeling hits harder for them. We've known a ton of people that struggle hard with that, more-so if having kids was already on your must-do list and you just delayed it too long.
So to answer your question more directly, I don't think the person you described is selfish. They may however realize they were if they ever decided to actually have kids and perhaps have some regret do to that.
As long as you participate actively in society by working, you are doing your part and are not being selfish.
Not having children isn't even a new concept. People have done it since time immemorial. What if they had multiple children and then lost them all to the statistically high child mortality rates? Were they being selfish by not furthering their lineage due to external circumstances?
These seem like very clear exceptions and reasons. Take it as a general sentiment, I'm not trying to footnote everything I write online to consider every possible circumstance any human could conceivably encounter. I think you should have known these are clearly not selfish acts. Biologically infertile being selfish? Come on dude.
But what of someone who will not have children at all? How is it, literally (in the definition of the word), "selfish" to not have children? From whom are you robbing experience? What is being "taken away" and from whom?
If you want kids, its selfish to bring the other party into existence. Life isn't all great, and you don't have a choice in whether or not you're born.
If you don't want kids, its selfish because you are not supporting the society (other party) that supports your existence. If we don't have kids above the replacement rate, society doesn't continue. If you are fine with that great, but its hypocritical if you plan to continue to benefit from society in your own life.
I see what you're saying about the replacement rate, but I don't see how, on a smaller scale, someone choosing to not have children is a selfish act within the context of a society that is not yet below "replacement" level.
And then they wash their hands of the matter and say “nope, I’m not giving anyone else a chance at life. I’ll enjoy mine but it ends here”.
That is selfishness.
Plenty of chances for a good life out there, more than ever.
What is this bizarre obsession some have with endless growth?
Why is it that having more and more people is so " essential"?
How many billions are enough to stabilise at?
The amount of technological progress in the past decade is staggering. So many infrastructure issues are now just automated, that we don’t have to think about.
It’s a great time to be alive. And a great time to give someone else that opportunity to experience it too.
Looking at long term trends, the only single thing I can be sure of is the future won't look like the present.
I am currently experiencing a strong drive to start a family. Lets say I get very lucky and cause a pregnancy tomorrow; kid comes out 9 months later, 21 years (± whatever for when school starts), they graduate university and… it's not predictable in the slightest. We might have single-atom transistors as standard, or the factories might be too expensive to mass produce them. We might have solved all genetic conditions, or research might have stalled with Moore's Law. AI might be good enough to make human labour uneconomical, which is a separate issue to if we will arrange our economies to make this a utopia or a dystopia, or it might not. Even without AI, internet connectivity and robotics is enough to make Amazon Mechanical Turk more like its namesake, with the same impact on cost-cutting and outsourcing to whoever has an internet connection. Genetics research, even if limited to no-growth-in-computing scenarios, may also make it affordable for small and dumb terrorist groups to attempt DIY genocides, and even if they fail at their goal that may still cause megadeaths… but we may well also have defences against it, either biological or surveillance. Similar issues for drones and high-powered lasers. We've already got government-affordable ways to put literally every human on the planet under 24/7 surveillance, and that's likely to get cheap enough for organised crime to automate blackmail, but we also already have people doing that with generative AI and the social responses (let alone the legislative) could be almost anything. 3D printed houses and boats are both realities now, will we finally witness large-scale seasteading, or is that fundamentally untenable?
And that's all assuming no world-ending, or even just economy-ending, catastrophes of any kind — no paperclip optimisers, no nuclear wars, no peak-${insert-resource-here}, no environmental issues causing 1e9-scale migration.
"Boo hoo, the weather is shitty and some people are moving around because of it" he says, as he doesn't have to worry about Bubonic Plague or Genghis Khan.
There’s no reason to say it’s selfish tbh.