Is it selfish to choose not to have kids?

My grandmother raised six kids in a two-bedroom apartment and never once described her life as a sacrifice of her potential. Somewhere along the way we started treating the continuation of the family as an imposition on the self, as if every generation before us was a sucker for doing the thing that made our existence possible. I'm not saying everyone must have children. I'm saying the language gives it away: we call kids a "lifestyle choice" now, filed between the Peloton and the dog. When the deepest human bond in history gets demoted to a consumer preference, something in us has gotten smaller, and I think that's worth saying out loud even if it's unfashionable.