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Every week there are several discussions brought up on this roundup about how low birth rates are a problem and people need to be convinced through propoganda and or religious manipulation or in some other way incentivized to make decisions that contribute to higher birth rates. Its rare that the other side gets argued for, either that higher birth rates would be bad, or that there is nothing wrong with current breeding patterns in our society. It seems to me like low birth rates are a result of people having the freedom, in accordance to their right to self ownership, to limit or delay or prevent the birthing of children, and that the resulting low birth rates are a reflection of the revealed preferences of the population. I also dont see any negative externality to people having less kids, its not like they are indirectly supressing the fertility of others who desire more kids. Which is why Im confused why its such a big deal to people on here and related spaces. Ive heard conspiracies about how culture has been altered by influential people with an antinatalist agenda to make childrearing lower in priority to women than having a career or marrying late, but I think its more likely that you are seeing these messages because a large segment of the population agrees with them because these life styles match their innate preferences. I think as long as society does not shame women who want to be fecund mothers, its a lot better than in the past where women were not allowed to pursue an alternative life plan. In general, I think its better if people have kids because they want to, not because they feel pressured to or forced to. I personally am debating whether I even want to bring children to this world, there is too much suffering and worry.
A little bit tangential, but I think it is worth mentioning that this sentence is based on some moral rule, or axiom of "self-ownership". I notice it a lot lately, you have some philosophers creating something - like Rawl's veil of ignorance - which is supposedly self-evident and basic. And then there is some implicit belief that whatever society stems from this belief must be good and moral, because the belief is moral by default. Rationalists have the same tick in their axiology where they put "truth" and to large extent "prevent suffering" as something automatic and then designing policies around that. I think it is worth realizing that not all people necessarily share this framework. In fact, there are supposedly limits even for adherents - for instance all countries I am aware of ban selling your own organs for transplantation, which theoretically is part of self-ownership.
This is a very narrow look at externality. All societies have some social construct and defecting from it can be viewed as subversive and bad. Some people do not have such hyper-individualistic worldview of complete self-ownership and they expect some duties from members of society. Having kids and reproducing/perpetuating society that enabled your existence as may be the expectation, externality in this case is ceasing the link and preventing their kids from having similar experience. You can extend this to other avenues that require multigenerational commitment, even let's say climate change. Why should somebody expect me to do anything about it? I will probably be dead before 2100 when the bad things potentially happen. I have ownership of my body and actions and I refuse to voluntarily cooperate.
Self ownership isn't self evident, but appealing to it can bolster your argument because many people place value on it, otherwise, all morality comes down to opinion anyway. But saying that not all people share this framework is a reason not to structure morality by it seems to be a bit contradictory because it resembles an argument for self ownership where different people have different preferences and it is not fair for society to force people who want to live in a certain way to live by the demands of the dominant culture.
If a society places an expectation on its members to have kids and contribute to perpetuating their people, then the question must be asked why some people are defecting from this expectation. Maybe its because they lived a miserable life and don't want their kids to have a similar experience, maybe they don't think its fair to bring kids into the world and then shackle them to all the expectations demanded by their society, maybe they prefer doing other things than caring for children, and spending money on things that are not their children. I think perpetuating society is not an end in itself, what matters more is what the society that your perpetuating is like, and whether it is worth perpetuating, and this is why its important to acknowledge the differences in people and allowing them to live in a way which fulfills their desires the most. Your climate change example isn't exactly comparable because climate change is the cause of negative externalities going uncompensated for.
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