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To be honest, you do sound judgemental, and this topic is also dear to my heart as I have personal experience with the "if not doing it right, then not at all"

My story: shortly after getting married, my husband developed some mental issues as well as a substance abuse problem. I battled this for almost 8 years, we almost split up countless times, etc. etc. The details are too ugly to go into.
I made a conscious decision that I would NOT bring a child into this relationship until he was straightened out.

Eventually, he got it together. But now there's the issue of my age and health making it a non-starter to start a family at this point (more ugly details that I won't go into here). Plus other husband issues that are secondary to the health ones.

So, was I selfish to not bring a child into a situation like that? You may think so, but I do not.
Sometimes people make the decision not to have kids not because it's in their best interest, but because it's in the best interest of the potential child.

I have another set of friends who didn't have kids because a serious mental illness ran all over the husbands family tree. It broke the wifes heart, but the husband was too afraid to take the chance the kid would have it, or that he would get it while the kid was growing up (every male in the line has had at least some of it - no, I'm not 100% sure what the disease is).

So before you judge, I respectfully suggest that you know the entire stories of those you judge. The facts beneath the decision may surprise you.

And frankly, I wish more people were "selfish" and didn't have kids, instead of having them and neglecting them, abusing them, treating them as fashion accessories, and all in all doing a crappy job of parenting them. Having them and not doing your best to raise them is the real selfish act.

LQ