Is it selfish to choose not to have kids?

My mother cried when I told her. Actual tears, at the kitchen table. Then she got over it, because she is an adult, and now she has a rich life full of friends, travel, and a daughter who calls every Sunday. The whole 'but your parents' argument assumes that parental disappointment is a permanent injury rather than an emotion that passes. Adults adapt. My mother adapted. If your moral framework requires you to produce a grandchild to manage your mother's feelings, the problem is a family that never learned that children are people, not achievements.