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

People should have children to support the economy.

You've just admitted the real argument: children aren't ends in themselves, they're *means*. Economic units to be produced. That's precisely what Beauvoir rejected—reducing human flourishing to reproductive labor for the state's benefit. But here's the problem with your logic: if we *need* children for economic growth, we're admitting our entire system depends on coercing people into parenthood. That's not freedom—that's conscription disguised as morality. Meanwhile, countries with the lowest birth rates (Japan, Germany) aren't economically collapsing; they're adapting with automation and immigration. The economy exists to serve human life, not the reverse. So either children are intrinsically valuable as human beings—in which case the economic argument is insulting—or they're not, and forcing people to have them for GDP is grotesque. Which is it?