I can understand this.
For me, though, it is simple: I do not like children. I do not want to live with them, listen to them cry, change diapers or spend time away from the things I would rather be doing. I am too impatient and controlling of my home environment to tolerate children.
There is no altruism here. Why have something I dislike so much?
Now that is an argument I can understand, though not one I agree with.
IMO anti-natalists make too much sense. I try not to think about it because it’s sorta depressing. But from a different perspective not so much. We all know what it’s like to not exist because we all remember being unborn for 15 billion years. So everyone going back to that state would be, on balance, a good thing.
That sounds like anyone who is consumed by a particular activity. Stock brokers like to talk about the stock market. If you’re around kids all the time, kids are what you have to talk about. Though, I don’t talk about my kids constantly to people who are not interested, or at least, I try not to. I try to be aware of cues that the other person isn’t interested in what I am saying. 
No it wouldn’t. It’s only a good thing if you hate life, if you are a weak-willed coward who cannot handle suffering. You do not remember being unborn because there was no you until after you were conceived. Maybe we remember on some level the warm embrace where everything was provided to us by our Mother’s womb, but we do not remember prior to that.
Well in practice, other factors are likely to swamp the effects of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, to put it mildly.
That said, if a family has 2 kids instead of 4, there’s the possibility that the smaller number could benefit educationally from greater attention and possibly even shorter work hours during college. Moreover, those with wholehearted dedication to parenting are probably better at it than those raising kids because they feel a misconceived and dubious obligation to populate the fatherland. So, no, opting out of procreation is hardly a selfish act, quite the contrary.
Like the fact that very few people know or care about its existence? For a while I wanted to make a line of T-shirts called, “Population Control”, with topics intended to induce suicide. I decided of course that I did not want my legacy to be something so cruel so it was more of a black joke I made up than anything else. I wanted to make shirts that said stuff like, “Just because you’re anorexic doesn’t mean you’re not fat.” “Just one more taste and then you can give it up for good.”
Sure, I wasn’t talking about smaller families as much as I was talking about families that have no kids at all.
Like the kind of sad bit in Idiocracy where the smart, wealthy yuppie couple are talking about how they can’t have kids in that market, and eventually the husband dies and the wife is past her prime.
Opting out of procreation is selfish by definition. I’m really not interested in the argument about it. It’s selfish, but so what?
That’s not the analogy I’d have used, if only because I can’t quite picture socially conservative people boasting about their hot sex lives in the same way that they drone on about their children’s accomplishments.
Mentioning that Mrs Sandwich and I have no interest in children rarely causes any surprise or alarm. Mentioning that I have no interest in spectator sports does seriously confuse lots of people though! 
That’s not even close to true. What about someone who wants children, but doesn’t because they don’t want to inflict their nasty genetic disease on the kids? How is that selfish? What about someone who doesn’t think they can care for children properly? What about someone who thinks that the future of their country or the world is awful enough that it would be cruel to condemn a child to that? How is that selfish?
In fact, I feel the opposite; someone who believes that sort of thing, and then goes and has children anyway - they are the selfish ones. Having children is quite often a selfish and not at all admirable act.
I think that the choice to have or not have children is complicated, and there are selfish aspects to both choices. I don’t think you can argue that one is significantly more selfish than the other–is not wanting to change diapers at 3 AM or give up much of your disposable income for 20 years more or less selfish than wanting someone to feel obligated to love you unconditionally and take care of you when you are old? It’s about as useful a question as “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”.
That said, everyone seems to think there is a strong correlation between one’s desire to have children and one’s qualities as a parent. This is the sort of thing that makes intuitive sense, but I am not sure it holds up: I’ve known people who desperately wanted kids who turned out to be rotten parents and some people who were at best conflicted about it who turned out to be great. Certainly a strong desire to have kids isn’t a bad thing, but from my own observations, I think sound judgment, emotional stability, patience, creativity, and intelligence are all more important. You give someone with any three of those traits a baby, and they will do a pretty good job of it, regardless of their desire. You give a child to someone who lacks all or most of those qualities, and they are going to be a trial to their children, however much they love those kids.
Except that you are saying slightly different things. While you both say it isn’t the sort of thing you bring up, he’s saying it is so common as to be non-surprising, except back when his parents where having kids (whereas you say ‘reactions are getting better’, implying this acceptance is a recent development).
You can’t both be right - either this is a recent development, or it isn’t.
Fact is, if it isn’t the sort of thing anyone brings up, why the “surprise” at anyone’s surprise if you bring it up? Naturally people will not be familiar with this attitude, if no-one who holds it speaks of it (the Internet excepted).
Everyone now alive must on some level disagree with the anti-natalists. They are voting with their existance.
Any action taken that benefits one’s self is selfish. Please read the whole thread. If you don’t think you can care for children, it’s still a selfish act. Selfish =/= Evil. It just means that it is motivated by reasons of the self.
Well, you’re using the pedestrian definition where selfish automagically = bad I suppose. In that case, I agree with you, it’s not selfishbad, it’s not selfishgood, it’s just selfish. Having children is also a selfish act. Whether or not you admire the choice is completely irrelevant.
By your definition, everything we do is selfish - eat, have sex, give to charities, go to work. So not having children is trivially selfish, but only when you devalue the word to the extent that you do…
Tell me something that we do that isn’t selfish, please.
Yes, it is. Everything we do is selfish.
Using it any other way is doublespeak and that’s doubleplusungood.
It allows us to selfishly diminish the actions of others, while obfuscating our own selfishness.
Though I disagree that it necessitates putting one’s needs above the needs of others. Many selfish acts can be mutually beneficial.
In my experience as a 43 year old woman who has never wanted children, I’m finding the reactions of people who find out I am childfree by choice to be getting better than they were when I was in my twenties. Those reactions were usually people arguing with me. At this point I don’t volunteer the information because of twenty years of not having positive reactions when people find out; the reactions are getting better, and I might start becoming more forthright about my personal choice. I probably won’t, though, because it really isn’t anyone’s business, and there are still the nutjobs out there who feel the need to judge how other people are living their lives (they’ve even shown up in this thread!).
I’m not going to argue that Voyager’s experience is right or wrong; chances are very good that it was different from mine.
The discussion of selfish is the reason why I think selfish should just be taken right off the table when discussing matters like this - it is so beside the point as to be completely irrelevant. It’s selfish to have kids; it’s selfish to not have kids; everyone cancels everyone else out, so how about we discuss other issues around choosing whether or not to have kids (like the OP did - that was a very good OP).
I agree. It’s an useless word, generally just used to make the other side look bad for pursuing their self-interest. Pretty much in 100% of cases. Hyperbolic rhetorical device, little more.
That might also be because people in their twenties often just say that. I went through an, “I am never getting married.”, phase in my early twenties. In your 40s it’s a lot more clear that the decision is one you really believe in.
Also, I think in general mores have changed quite a bit in the last 20 years.
… which is my point entirely. It is still possible in this day and age to not have encountered a significant body of opinion that has chosen not to have kids by choice (particularly if you do not haunt the Internet).