I’ve seen a lot of overlap between communities for adult children of narcissists and childfree communities, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. If you grow up having your parents treat you horribly and having them tell you, implicitly or explicitly, that you made them that way, it’s very easy to internalize that on some level and decide that the only way not to become the sort of person your parents were is to never have children yourself.

E: To give a personal example, even as a kid I always thought that spanking was fucked up and told my dad as much (he spanked me on occasion, but to be clear he didn’t come anywhere close to the horror stories you hear from adult children of narcissists), his reply was always something to the effect of “If you were a parent, you’d understand why I do it.” Decided I didn’t want to someday become the sort of person who thinks it’s okay to hit kids.