You've had a baby, I've had a baby, we're all having babies and trying to raise them. What we're not having, if I can believe the talk at the nail salon, is sex—or at least not the sloppy, frequent sex we used to, the sex of the childless: the languid sex in the late morning, the drunken sex at 3 a.m., the living-room floor sex during The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.
A good bit of this parental abstinence is circumstantial. It's difficult to find the opportunity for lovemaking when a small, demanding animal (or several) occupies all your free time and, quite possibly, your bed. But the trickier issue is one of mind-set: The sleep deprivation and emotional intensity of child rearing wear a girl out, and where's the appeal of physical intimacy when you're overworked, reduced to baby talk, and coated in flab?
Various eggheads have tracked this drop in sexual engagement: According to a 1998 study in Family Planning Perspectives, 18- to 29-year-olds have sex an average of 112 times per year, 30- to 39-year-olds average 86 times per year, and 40- to 49-year-olds manage an average of 69 times per year. Another report, The Social Organization of Sexuality (University of Chicago Press, 1994), claimed that nearly 50 percent of married women have sex less than once a week. I myself am an enthusiast of the marital act; still, there are days when I recall that Mr. Young has something interesting in his pants, but I don't remember what. Probably Cheerios. This isn't a good state of affairs, but it brings me to the question for this column:
Q Mrs. Young, I'm so tired and never interested in having sex with my husband. What can I do to perk up our love life?
A Forget needing to be interested—have sex even when you're not in the mood. I know this contravenes the entire published wisdom of Cosmopolitan, as well as Norman Mailer, who claims that the "one thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it." But, come on, anything that pair agrees on is immediately suspect.
Since you have kids, your interactions with your spouse are likely to revolve around life-management transactions. Did you drop off the laundry? Does the child need new pants? Where is the peanut butter? Although this kind of relationship is almost unavoidable, it's really unpleasant, like having a resentful administrative assistant who sleeps in your bed.
The solution is sex. Making love is the most powerful way to get back to the mental and emotional core of your relationship and return to the intense intimacy that's the point of being together. You need to build up reserves of that intimacy more than you need the guarantee of an orgasm.
Try to have sex at least once a week. You'll be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to have a good time, once you get over that first hump of reluctance. I wouldn't recommend faking enthusiasm—just pick a sexual act that accommodates your mood. Rear entry minimizes the need for excited facial expressions, and for those particularly disengaged moments, might I suggest fellatio?
