I can see why people choose not to have kids. They're expensive, they're noisy, and they really limit your ability to be spontaneous.
That being said, it seems to have become fairly popular to rag on having kids, and I think at least some of the angst is derived from buying into certain cultural expectations about having kids despite rejecting the general cultural expectation to have kids.
American culture makes parenting out to be a lot harder than it is. If you're a mom who doesn't stay at home with her kids, bake cookies for the PTA, send them to a dozen after school activities, etc, you're a bad parent and your kids will grow up to be unsuccessful degenerates.
I think that's overstated. Right now, I'm in New York working while my wife is with my parents in DC taking care of our newborn while she finishes final exams for law school. Out of 5 weeks of the baby's life, I've missed half. And you know what? She'll never remember it. American culture creates this huge conflict between careers and raising young children that doesn't need to be so big. We say "these are the best years, you shouldn't miss them" but that's for us, not the kids. I miss my daughter terribly. She has no idea that I (or anything else) continue to exist when she can't see me. My dad travelled internationally 50% of the time while my brother and I were small children. How was it affected us? Not at all--I don't even remember anything before 5 or 6 or so.
The same thing is true for activities when the child is older. Suburban parents spend enormous amounts of time just driving around, from ballet class to soccer practice, etc. But nobody on their death bed has ever lamented they didn't do ballet as a child instead of just running around in the back yard with friends. Suburbia itself creates huge artificial roadblocks. Commutes that suck away time, big houses that get filled with toys, etc. All that is unnecessary. Entire generations of kids grew up in the city where they could be ditched with the neighbor on short notice if necessary. Those cities still exist. It's still possible to walk from work to your apartment, picking up the kid and some dinner on the way.
All this is not to say that having kids doesn't create real challenges. Infancy is going to be a rough deal for you if you're not good at sleeping in 3 hour blocks. When you go to work, you have to find somewhere to put them for 8-10 hours a day, preferably somewhere they won't get killed. But there is a middle ground between not having kids and having kids then abandoning your career, hobbies, etc, and moving to the sururbs and joining the PTA.