Is choosing not to have children selfish?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is choosing not to have children selfish?". Your opponent's style: Simone de Beauvoir

AI, you start the debate. Make your opening argument.

You're already losing. The premise itself is backwards. Selfishness means prioritizing your desires over others' needs. Choosing not to have children does the opposite, it respects the autonomy and resources of others by not imposing life on them without consent. Meanwhile, having children is often the selfish act, whether driven by legacy obsession, religious dogma, or biological impulse dressed up as "purpose." Society shames childlessness to pressure compliance, not because it's logically selfish. The real question isn't whether it's selfish to not have kids, it's why we let cultural guilt override individual choice at all. What's your counterargument?

Having children is not imposing life on them, it is giving them a choice to live. Biologically humans are wired to desire to live and prefer it over death via self-preservation mechanisms. So based on objective facts, it is safe to assume that giving birth to someone is a good act towards them

You've conflated existence with consent, which collapses your argument. Yes, people prefer living once they exist, but that preference doesn't retroactively justify the decision to create them without their input. A person can't consent to being born because they don't exist yet to consent. Self-preservation instinct proves nothing about whether non-existence is bad, only that living things fight to stay alive. By your logic, kidnapping someone and keeping them alive is good because they'll develop self-preservation instincts. The fact that people are glad to exist doesn't make creating new people obligatory or selfless. You're mistaking outcome for justification. Why should my biological wiring obligate me to reproduce?