We are told that people are selfish for not wanting children.
Selfish for refusing to marry.
Selfish for working abroad after receiving an education paid for by Czech taxpayers.
And so on.
Like most moralizing, this line of argument is above all foolish and superficial.
There do exist exceptional individuals who renounce personal advantage and the ordinary pleasures of life: they enter monasteries, devote themselves to abandoned animals, or make other demanding moral choices. Such people deserve admiration. But we cannot expect this kind of self-sacrifice from any significant share of the population. We never have. These people have always been rare.
Ordinary citizens are different. No one makes disadvantageous life decisions simply because they are morally superior. That may happen briefly, in moments of acute crisis—when we rescue drowning children, rush into burning buildings, or go to the front. But as a rule, and over the long term, human behavior is driven by the expectation of a better life or by the desire to avert danger. We are prepared to call “moral” only those choices that are, at the same time, advantageous.
If people are troubled by declining birth rates, the proper response is not condemnation but reform: to change social and economic conditions so that parenthood genuinely increases life satisfaction, security, and opportunity. That would at least move toward alleviating the problem.
Moralizing achieves only one thing: it allows the moralizer to manufacture a sense of personal superiority. Nothing more.