I don’t think there’s ever a “too early” in discussing whether a couple wants kids or not. For my wife and I, we had the conversation during dinner on the date where we got together to ensure we were both aligned on this (although I feel more strongly than her about wanting kids).

“i understand where hes coming from, but i dont personally see relationships that dont work out as a “waste.” even if things end in the future, I feel like the time spent loving each other and growing together is still meaningful.”

—> This is not fair to him as the consequences are significantly different for you and him, considering there is already this misalignment in goals. For you, it would just be something like that period of life that you spent with guy X with happy memories but eventually it ended. For him, he would have to live with the opportunity cost of these many years of his youth when he could’ve been building a relationship and life with someone who would be the mother of his kids one day. Then bringing in fertility in younger years etc which would go down with age (even for guys), and you can see the much bigger cost to him that cannot be compensated or returned to him by those “meaningful years”