I certainly grew up thinking that, with good reason. I’m the eldest of a large, poor family, born to parents who had far more children than they could afford, economically or emotionally. I’d done too much parenting myself by the time I’d turned 12 to be anything other than perfectly sure that I wasn’t going to have children. I got out of poverty via education, had and have a fulfilling career and a satisfying life, married and lived in various different countries. I was happy. All of my siblings are childfree by choice.
It just occurred to me one day, aged 39, that I didn’t want my unhappy childhood to define me in terms of whether or not I had a child. I reasoned that I was better educated, more at peace with myself, had more money and time and work flexibility than my parents, so my experience of being a parent was going to be different, and that even if it turned out to be less interesting than I hoped, I would still make a decent parent. And in fact it has been interesting, though as a lovely addition to an already good life, not some kind of transformation of it.
Which is obviously not to advocate that other people should become parents if they have no great urge to, only that for me, with one child, born when I was senior enough in my career for flexibility, with a hands-on, fully involved father, parenthood hasn’t been the drudgery I’d viewed it as from outside.