 Sometimes people ask me, well, are being an amputee? Is that the reason you don't want kids? You're dealing with a disability. Is that why you don't want kids? You have chronic pain. That must be why you don't want kids. My honest answer is actually hello there, my beautiful, lovely, delightful, talented internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today on Footless Joe. I am Joe. I am missing a foot, at least a meat foot. And today I wanna talk to you about why I am never having kids. This is a really delicate subject for a lot of people that's something that I'm more than happy to talk about. But I realize it is a sensitive issue for a lot of people. So if you're not in the headspace to hear about this today, check out one of the German Shepherd Puppy videos I have linked below because believe me, those will make your day better. I posted recently kind of an Ask Me Everything both on YouTube during live stream and also on an Instagram story. And one question that consistently comes up quite a bit is when are you having kids or are you and Brian planning to have kids? So today I wanted to talk about that. How much does my amputation affect the fact that we're never having kids? How much does chronic pain play into that? Are any of those the actual reasons why? To me as a cis hetero woman in society, this is a really important conversation for me to have with you because there is this expectation, especially if you're married, that of course you will have kids because that's the way that people generally do things. But that's not gonna be the case for me and here's why. As we dive in today, if you wanna hit that like button and maybe that subscribe button, if you're feeling extra generous, that would be fantastic. If you've watched a ton of my live streams, first of all, thank you if you've done that. You know that this question does come up pretty regularly and I always say no, Brian and I are not planning on having kids. I may give a variety of different reasons but I had a realization the other day because I have a very clear reason that I don't wanna have kids and that we aren't planning on ever trying. And it's taken me a long time to be able to articulate this and put it into clear words and I finally figured out what I actually want to say to this question. So like I said, there definitely is an expectation that if you are a cis-het woman in society that you'll probably have babies at one point. Like don't most women want babies and the answer is yes, most women tend to want to be mothers in my experience but not everybody. And there was a time in my life where I absolutely considered that where I assumed that would probably be the case but as experiences have come up for me, I've realized that will not be the case. I'm gonna tell you two quick stories, two of my favorite stories when it comes to the expectation to have children and I just wanna make it really clear. I don't feel any resentment towards people for these questions. I just think that they're incredibly inappropriate to be asking someone. So the first one, the first one's a little less serious than the second. The first one is when I was working in an office, right? This is a professional environment, professional setting. My dad worked in the office as well and he had a client come in, older gentleman, probably about 70 or so. And when he introduced me as his daughter, this guy's first question to me is have you given your father the greatest gift and the thing that you were put here on earth to do by giving him grand babies? And I was like, this is quite the conversation to start off an introduction with, but no. And also, what a bizarre question to ask someone and why would you phrase it that way? Hi dad, by the way, I know you watch my video sometimes and it means a lot to me that you take time out of your day to watch these videos and I'm curious if you remember this interaction because it definitely was weird for me. But I mean, depending on the day, it's kind of par for the course. The weird thing about that is there was absolutely the implication of course I would have kids eventually but then secondly, I kind of owed it to my father to have children. Okay, moving on to my favorite example of being expected to have children. Hello, is this an upsetting topic for you? Are you okay? Do you think I'm not okay? I am okay. You're getting dog hair all over my pretty sweatshirt. She says I don't care, mommy. It's my job. Okay, so example number two and this story is just mind boggling to me. I was in a Wells Fargo branch. That, if you are unaware, is a bank. It is a large professional bank chain. And I was going there to close a business checking account. Not a complicated procedure but I had to meet with someone in their office to kind of go through some details information, work it out, no big deal. And the fellow that I met with was about my age, give or take a few years and he started asking me about my life and my family and I said it was recently married and he asked me if I had any kids yet and I said, no, not yet. We're not really planning on it and he stopped. And this is not the bad part of the story so just bear with me for a second and he stopped and said, you'll never be able to truly experience love in your life unless you have children. And I was like, cool, this is a bit of an intense conversation for closing a checking account but whatever, man, that's all right, I'll play it off. And then when I went to hand to my driver's license to verify my information, looked at my birth date, looked at me, looked at the card again, looked at me and said, you're running out of time to have kids, you should really get on that. Excuse me? What? In retrospect, there were many better ways to respond to that situation than how I responded which was mostly just, okay, thank you, can I have my card back? But what I'm trying to illustrate with those two stories there's definitely this expectation that of course you'll have kids and you should have kids and that shows up in many areas of life. I think if you're a woman in society, you've probably experienced this the second you get married people are like, when are the babies coming? And I have no problem with anyone asking me it sincerely but like I said in my live streams and Instagram questions, stuff like that, people are always asking us about kids. So here is my actual answer to why I'm not having kids. There was a long time in my life where I had this long list of reasons that kids weren't a good idea because of this or because of that or because they get migraines and high-pitched noises make them really, really worse and trigger them, which is absolutely true. And being pregnant as an amputee sounds absolutely terrifying to me. It's not something I would wanna go into and okay, so that's another reason and right now both Brian and I have to work and of course we could figure out both of us working, families do it all the time but that's another obstacle and blah, blah, blah. There's just all of this stuff that I always tell people when they ask me why I wasn't having kids, sometimes during those conversations people will ask me like, well, can you have kids? Which by the way, I don't think is ever a question you should ask someone who you do not have a very close relationship with because that can be extremely painful to talk about for a lot of people but here's my real answer. I'm not having kids and we're not having kids because I don't wanna be a mom. I always felt like I had to have this list of logical reasons that would make sense to other people to justify why I'm not procreating and reproducing life. And for the record, there are logical and operational and structural things to think about but I had this realization the other week that I'm like, none of that's ever been why I don't have kids, it probably plays into it. The reason why I don't want children is because I don't want children. It's just, that's not a desire that I have at least at this point in my life and I'm grateful that my husband feels the same way. Neither one of us have really ever had a deep desire for children. We've both talked about fostering, I'd be really passionate about doing that in the future because kids need homes and maybe adoption way down the road. But that's a huge question mark for us and that's something we're actively thinking about right now. It was an interesting realization for me to have the other day that I always feel like I need to give in a valid excuse in other people's eyes for not popping out babies. And I wanted to make this video because I know that other people feel the same way and get shamed for it and ridiculed for it and I haven't really gotten shamed or ridiculed, it's just more just the questions of it, right? And like I said, this isn't something that's a super sensitive topic for me so I'm happy to have the conversation. It seems to be a pretty abnormal thing to say you don't want children, at least in my experience. And I honestly feel not the least bit bad about that. I do feel like it's an expectation that's placed upon women in society but there's a lot of people on planet earth. I don't think you need people who don't want kids popping out more kids if you want kids. I think that's fantastic. Have kids if you can. But this idea that there's a should behind that is sort of odd to me. And I'm not saying that this would like never ever change. I can just tell you that neither my husband or I have literally any desire for that in our lives. Our lives are complete and whole without kids and if you know you can't predict everything if that ever happened, our lives would be complete and whole with kids too, right? Like there's nothing that's missing from me or missing from my life or broken in me which is why I don't want children. I just don't, I just don't want them. And I think that's okay. Let me know if you feel the same way, if you've ever had conversations like this. Most women who I've talked to who don't want kids feel a lot of frustration around this topic because of all of the people in their lives who are like, why aren't you having babies? And some of the weird conversations like I referenced earlier. But if you're someone who doesn't want kids, just know that you're not the only one who feels that way because I definitely feel the same way too. And I don't think that there's anything wrong or broken about that. So as we wrap up this video, I do want to share one piece of wisdom with you from a dear friend of mine. Her and her husband were married many years, decided to foster and then adopt three incredible, incredible boys. They are amazing parents. But she said that during that time that they didn't have kids yet, people would ask them all the time, like, when are you having kids? When are you having kids? When are you having kids? And she got really sick of it, understandably so, and started telling people, actually I can actually physically, I'm not able to, and people would be horrified and she would immediately tell them, actually I can, but like what if that was the case? What if you were putting this pressure on someone who could not have children and desperately wanted to, you might be tapping into one of their greatest sources of pain. It can be an incredibly huge loss if someone is unable to carry children if that's a desire that they have. So when you are asking people this question, I get that people are curious, totally understand that. I think it's really important to take into consideration that some people cannot have children, that's a very painful subject for a lot of folks. I'm grateful that at least to my knowledge, my body does not prevent me from having kids. There are definitely medical factors that play into it being complicated, but if this was something I wanted to my knowledge, my body's able to do that. It's just that I don't want it, but the reality is there are a lot of people out there who really, really do want kids and are not able to. So if you are someone who wants to know, like, hey, when are you having kids? Cause it can be exciting conversation for people. I would just encourage you to be careful of how and who you ask and make sure that maybe you have an existing relationship with that person before asking that question, things of that nature. So take that for what it is, but I think it is a very wise piece of advice that I have definitely adhered to. And I'm hopeful that as society progresses, we maybe will have a little less shame and pressure placed upon women to pop out babies, especially as soon as they get married. All right, that is my rant, my story for today. I truly appreciate you sticking around and hearing it. Like I said, I would love to hear any thoughts and conversations and questions in the comment section down below. I always love hearing what you guys have to say, whether or not you agree with me, whether or not you think what I'm saying is legit or a good idea or not. Feel free to respectfully share your thoughts with each other down below. I'll definitely be reading through all comments. If you're a guy, I'm really interested in your opinion on this whole conversation. Do you feel a lot of pressure to reproduce, to have kids? Like do people ask you those same questions? I've never really had those conversations with many of my guy friends. I'm kind of interested. A huge debt of gratitude also goes out to my patrons over on Patreon for financially supporting this channel. You guys make this possible. I truly cannot thank you enough for that. If you are interested in financially supporting, Footless Joe, check out the link on screen or down below in return for financially supporting this channel. There are a number of little perks that you get, which I think are pretty fun. You let me know if you think that they're fun. But like I said, link on screen or down below. And to you watching this video right now, thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere in the world doing anything and you chose to spend a few minutes with me. And that means a lot to me. Thank you so much. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys. 🎵Hand her from the sky🎵