I don't think it's really a question of "enjoy your riches," because no matter what your status, nobody can "afford" children, not even the ultra high net worth individuals. It's a burden regardless.
But I think therein lies the answer. There was a time not all that long ago that not having children was a burden. Who was going to bring in the harvest, or at the very least supervise bringing in the harvest? Who could you really trust to take care of you properly when you got old? And of course, there's a biological compulsion as well, but that's much easier to sidestep only in the last couple generations.
As for the burden of having kids, I think it’s way too simplistic to say it was a burden NOT to have them in the past. There were different cultural dynamics, for sure, but kids have always been a mixed blessing—both difficult and extremely rewarding. Having kids has historically forced adults to face their own shortcomings. Not an easy thing to do in any era.
...why do you assume it would be yes?
But if, as hotpotamus suggests, "consent" is a useful way to look at this, then that's not good enough. You can't randomly do surgery on people just because you believe there's a 90% chance they'll be happy with the results.
Someone is unconscious and dying, you can save them with surgery, surely it’s highly unethical to wait for their explicit consent?!
If the ethical thing to do is increase the total happiness (or perhaps contentedness, or satisfaction) of all humans...well it's just not really clear that adding a statistically average human is the way to increase human prosperity / reduce human suffering.
To your other point, now that I'm a parent, it's easy to see that becoming a parent made me into a better person, but there was no way I could have known that that would happen before becoming one.
All of history has been an steady march forward of more prosperity and less suffering accomplished by an entire population of, on average, average people.
We're really really far from extinction. That's just simply not an issue at all.
Something something boson something neutron, and the Earth goes kaboom.
Children can be very dangerous.
Why do rich people in rich countries have fewer children than poor people in rich countries?
Nowhere is it seen that more money correlates to more children.
Second generation and later of immigrants very rapidly adopt the social customs of the country they live in. This is seen everywhere. Vietnamese to Australia. Filipinas to the US. Congolese to Nigeria. Marocs to Spain.
There just aren't throngs of young people living "traditionally" (non-individualistically) yet not having kids.
The rhetoric is still about "increasing female labor force participation".[1]
For clarity, the thing you do first is your priority. This is known as "revealed preference" in economics. And careers are individual things, not collective.
Also for background, fertility declines secularly from mid-teens to mid forties where it goes to zero. Waiting has two costs: you have fewer years in which to have children, and you are less likely to have them in each year. (There is a third one in increased risk of congenital illness in the child too.) Nearly every woman knows these things.
1. https://thechinaproject.com/2022/03/08/women-at-work-in-chin...
Can you really not see how this doesn't work in modern society? Women fought hard to have rights.
In other countries it continued even longer.
Exceptionally idiotic communist policies probably played a much bigger role. At least initially. If you ban families from having more than a single child and perform forced abortions or impose massive fines on those that dare to have a second one. Well.. I’m not sure what else you could expect
These days we can move beyond survival and into real fulfillment. And we need to, as well. We can't live without knowledge anymore. Critical thought brought us this far. And we're really far from extinction. We could do with a few billion less people if we want to be sustainable. The transition will be tough for those getting old but it'll be worth it.
I think that also there is a culture shift that has taken place, there is less pressure to create a traditional family unit. More virtue is given to autonomy and following your dreams than settling down. In addition to this, contraceptives such as IUDs have become much more socially accepted, so less people are getting pregnant. Naturally all of this adds up to a drastically lower average fertility rate than a few decades ago.
In summary, it’s a bit of culture shift, economics and science which has led us to where we are today. The result is that in the next few decades we will either have to start having more children again, or rework the way our economies are structured to account for less growth in exchange for a focus on sustainability and providing a livable wage for all people. Its likely that if we keep with the status quo, quality of life will keep going down until we hit a breaking point.