I’d say that’s part of the equation, md2000. While my generation often had only one working parent, the parent that was home with the children didn’t spend great swathes of time focusing on the children (playing with them, entertaining them, and driving them around). I can’t say which child-raising method is better, but it does seem that child-raising now requires much more time from parents than it used to (after they’re finished working, which both parents usually have to do).
I think that neither having kids nor not having kids is “selfish”. In both cases you’re doing what you want to do.
Agreed - I’d be cool with people just dropping the term “selfish” out of these discussions altogether.
perhaps I should agree with Cat Whisperer and drop ‘selfish’ from this, but I suffer from the irresistible urge to add my ‘two cents worth’. Neither having kids nor not having kids is in itself selfish, its the circumstances that surround it, for example:
You are an egotistical bastard and wish to perpetuate yourself through your children, yet you and your wife carry a fatal genetic disease that means most of them will die. If you proceed to have a large number of children doomed to die just to get your chance at a rare survivor to ‘pass on your legacy’ your a selfish bastard.
Contra-wise: You are a manipulative bastard who deceives your mate into marrying you by pretending to agree that you want children, yet you sabotage all attempts at reproduction with your spouse. In this case your decision prevents THEM from having children as well as yourself, and is certainly selfish.
That starts to capture the situation with my wife and me.
We’re now in our mid-40s. We very much wanted children. We tried for several years, starting when we were in our early 30s, without success, but with several instances where Mrs. Kenobi was really late – getting our hopes up, only to have them dashed, which was particularly emotionally wrenching for Mrs. Kenobi.
We discussed trying fertility treatments, but knowing that they were by no means a guarantee (and knowing how torn up my wife got over the “near misses”), we eventually decided to not go that way. And, after several more years of semi-trying on our own, without success, we decided to simply stop trying.
So, we sort of wound up being “childless by choice”, but mostly we’re childless because we weren’t able to conceive.
I’m only 20 and my decision might change in time, but right now I don’t want to have children. Ever.
Okay, no selfish in the discussion for normal people. 
I actually knew of a family that had a genetic disease; knowing they would live their lives in wheelchairs, they still had four little girls. Jerks. The father was even a medical doctor - you can’t chalk that one up to ignorance.
I’m a gay female in my 40’s - never wanted kids, never had any. I don’t even have any visceral understanding of WANTING to have them - it’s like I’m missing a hormone or something. Just - no. I have no doubt that if I HAD wanted one, I would have had one, but why? My spouse wanted kids when she was younger (wanted a LOT of them), but like many non-feminine sex-typed lesbians I’ve met, she wanted someone ELSE to have them - it would never occur to her to get pregnant herself. This just kills me! I wonder how many guys would want kids if they had to have them themselves!
I am child-free by choice. I never refer to myself as “childless” because that implies that I want children but can’t/haven’t had any yet. I am child-free. I never wanted children, I don’t like them and I don’t feel any need to contribute to the overpopulation of our planet. So, I’m doing my bit by not having any of those obnoxious little snot-goblins.
To clarify, it’s other people defining my decision to be child-free as “selfish” because THEY expect me to have children that gets to me. I completely agree that the word has no place in this debate; except inasmuch as, if everybody can freely do what they want to do, and gets to choose, they’re going to make the decision that’s best for them, which is in its own way selfish. But not negatively so. Someone accused me the other day of being anti-children. I’m not at all. Who’s going to wipe my arse for me when I’m old if everyone stops having children?! The population needs to be maintained. Just not by me.
Or maybe they didn’t see their lives, even in wheelchairs, as that unbearable?
Selfish? Matter of definition.
Having children you cannot afford and expecting others (the taxpayer, etc.) to support them is selfish. However, society needs a next generation so some things - like schooling, and like medical care everywhere except the USA - is provided free by all of society as an investment in the future of all.
Having no children (deliberately) and expecting the rest of society to provide the support for you in your old age, and provide the workers to keep society going - maybe selfish, or maybe just being kind by allowing someone else to provide more of what they want to provide anyway.
And, as pointed out, some couples simply cannot have children the normal way. So suggesting that choosing not to have kids - something others do without choice - is somehow bad is not helpful to the well-being of society.
I put it more in a category of something like “gender selection”, for example - it’s fine when it’s done for the right reasons and as long as all things balance out. (The most common gender selection requst in North America except immigrants is not for boys, but to get “one of each”.) When it starts to seriously disrupt the balance of society, maybe it needs a good hard rethink.
How does this paragraph fit even slightly with the one before it? I’m not expecting anyone else to provide anything for me in my old age that I haven’t already paid for. I pay for other people’s children to be conceived (where this requires intervention), for their pre-natal care, birth, post-natal, all their medical care in fact (it’ll get tiresome if I enumerate every vaccination etc. I pay for as a taxpayer!), their education from free nursery places for parents who can’t afford to pay for their own offspring all the way through to assisted loans for university students (and some politicians are claiming they’ll bring back free university education if they win the election). If they fuck that up, they can also have free adult learning courses. I pay for jobseekers’ allowance, assisted council tax for low-income families, child benefit, family tax credits, free travel on public transport. I pay more tax on my clothes so that parents pay no tax on clothes for their children… I could go on, but I’m even boring myself here. I don’t want anything from these children that I didn’t already pay for on their behalf. I pay more tax than people who do have children, and through my taxes I support other people’s offspring and ways of life. I don’t think that remotely fits any definition of selfish.
This is sorta the situation I am in at the moment. I don’t EVER want to give birth but my fiance really feels like he needs to be a father. We are looking into adoption and that works perfectly for both of us. I don’t know what we would do in the event of an accidental pregnancy though. I don’t know if I could justify an abortion because I don’t my vagina to turn into Stargate.
I don’t think that was it; I can’t remember the exact disease, but it was more than just not being able to walk; these girls were severely disabled. I guess we could have a debate on that; after your first child is born with a severely disabling genetic condition, do you go ahead and have three more, knowing that the rest of your children with this partner will all have the same condition?
Well, let’s see… if 90% of the people choose not to have kids; the cost of labour will rise so much that when you need someone to spoon the soup into your mouth or bring the bedpans or just drive you to the mall - the sevice will not be there because you can’t afford it. This is the situation that many countries other than the USA are slipping into, when you see reproduction rates at the 1.3 level.
In Canada just before the recession started, there were several news items about areas of the country where HELP WANTED signs were going unanswered, where the drivethrough at the donut shop or McD’s was paying $15 an hour in the boom areas, stores closed early during the Christmas rush because they could not staff them…
As I said, it’s one of these things where it’s OK if a few do it, but not OK if everyone does it.
If you choose to not have kids because the thought of drooling wailing little critters bothers you, then fine; it’s an honest fair choice. If you do it because it would cut back on vacations in Europe or the motorbike you want to buy, my solitary humble opinion is that it’s selfish; but as pointed out by others, no more selfish than having more kids than you can handle.
There’s the analogy to, let’s say, burning raked leaves. One person does it, no problem. 4 million people do it in a congested metropolitan area, problem - even for the people who choose not to burn.
So childlessness or overpopulation are both only a problem or a wrong when the impact to society is disruptive. Are we there yet? I say no, but keep your eyes and your mind open to what’s happening.
If you want a motorbike or a certain lifestyle MORE than you want a child, then you are not meant to be a parent. It would be ridiculous to have a child if you were that unsure or uncommitted to the whole thing. It’s not selfish. It’s saving a child from having parents who actually deep down are counting every penny you cost them and thinking about how they could have been sipping champagne in Paris right now if they hadn’t had you.
It’s a little absurd to say that 90% of people are ever going to decide not to have children. Most people do choose to reproduce, and that’s fine for them. However it’s also fine for some people to choose not to. Could you specify which “many countries other than the USA” are allegedly running out of people, please.
I’m reading a book right now that goes into great detail on the exponential growth the earth is experiencing in human population (Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update), and one thing I’m not worried about us running out of is people.