I’m happy to discuss what “pro social” means in another thread to prevent derailing this one. For myself, it means taking care of everyone existing first at a reasonable level of quality, before encouraging more folks to have kids with social or economic incentives because the economic pyramid scheme is at risk.

If you have the resources, the support network, and the emotional aptitude, by all means, invest in having children. Even if you don’t enjoy the experience (the data shows a significant percentage of parents do not), society gets them as taxpayers eventually. But if you don’t, don’t. The data shows that if unintended pregnancies are avoided (about 40% globally annually, per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN), the fertility rate will settle someone between 50-75% of replacement rate (2.1).

TLDR Optimize for your own happiness. Ignore peer and societal pressure. If that means not having kids, and that causes society challenges, that’s a society problem to solve, versus dumping that externality and reduction of agency, freedom, and options on individuals.

The societal problem is elderly care will skyrocket.

Definitely sucks when liabilities come due and you can no longer kick the can down the road. Society will need to become comfortable with the additional go forward productivity drag incurred.