You gotta laugh at the Psycho Girlfriend episode (4 min) as she gets pregnant and her attitudes toward sex immediately change. Laugh-out-loud funny until you start crying.Note: some not unexpected salty language given the subject matter.

Dr. Louann Brizendine has written an important commentary at the CNN.com website, proclaiming, “Let Men be Men.” Men and women should read the column. Men to confirm our own self-knowledge, here recognized by an avowed feminist, that there’s nothing wrong with the way our brains work in regard to sex, because we are wired that way.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the male and female brain is that men have a sexual pursuit area that is 2.5 times larger than the one in the female brain. Not only that, but beginning in their teens, they produce 200 to 250 times more testosterone than they did during pre-adolescence.

If testosterone were beer, a 9-year-old boy would be getting the equivalent of a cup a day. But a 15-year-old would be getting the equivalent of nearly two gallons a day. This fuels their sexual engines and makes it impossible for them to stop thinking about female body parts and sex.

[From Love, sex and the male brain - CNN.com]

At the same time, Dr Brizendine goes on to talk about the changes the male body goes through after childbirth, including massive decreases in testosterone, which makes dads more willing and able to help with the baby.

A man in hot pursuit of a mate doesn’t even remotely resemble a devoted, doting daddy. But that’s what his future holds. When his mate becomes pregnant, she’ll emit pheromones that will waft into his nostrils, stimulating his brain to make more of a hormone called prolactin. Her pheromones will also cause his testosterone production to drop by 30 percent.

This translates into higher auditory acuity and the ability to hear a crying baby in the middle of the night. I can attest that before we had our babies, I could sleep through most things, including crying babies on airplanes. Now, I’m the one who hears the kids cries and whimpers in the middle of the night, while my wife often slumbers on.

Dr. Brizendine suggests that moms worried about leaving their kids with dad (if that is possible in the year 2010), consider that dads’ brains align more with fatherhood with more contact with baby. As we often say at GreatDad, baby bonding does work and moms and dads should take every opportunity to get physically close to the baby, especially if feeling ambivalent about parenthood.

Note: Dr. Louann Brizendine is a member of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the National Board of Medical Examiners, and a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. She is founder and director of the Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic. She wrote “The Female Brain” and, just released, “The Male Brain.”

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Here is a reporter’s query from a national magazine doing research for an upcoming story on sex after pregnancy. Rarely do you see such frank talk about sex after pregnancy, albeit posed as questions. This query, quoted below, poses questions that a lot of men ask themselves. Sex after pregnancy is a topic almost never discussed between men, lost as it is in all the changes including loss of sleep, heightened sense of responsibility and pride of fatherhood.

I would like to hear from moms with newborns (as well as moms with older children, for comparison) about how they feel or felt about sex for the first year or two after childbirth. In particular, I’d like to know:

• Did your desire diminish or disappear entirely? (FYI, this is totally normal; hence this story…)
• Did you expect to feel the way you did about sex after the baby? Did anyone prepare you for this?
• Did your partner’s interest in sex change at all?
• Did you realize that couples who have sex less than 10 times a year are considered to be in “sexless marriages” (which would mean many postpartum couples are indeed in sexless marriages)?
• If you find yourself with a baby and little or no sexual desire, when (if ever) would you seek help? Or do you assume this is something that will remedy itself as your child grows older? Moms with older children are invited to weigh in with their wisdom/experiences, particularly if they experienced a sexual lull but have managed to overcome it.

I hope this is an extensive story. The changes in the dynamics of a couple’s relationship with the addition of kids are important to explore. Otherwise, all involved continue to have different expectations of what is “normal” for other couples in their evolution from adolescents to adults to parents. The worst thing for a marriage is a nagging feeling that changes aren’t inevitable and that your particular situation is different than everyone up and down the street.

We’ve written before about the books 365 Days and Just Do It. Our advice was to buy them and leave them where “someone” might see them, give them a read, and hopefully pick up the challenge at the same time.

A week after the Rev. Ed Young challenged husbands and wives among his flock of 20,000 to strengthen their unions through Seven Days of Sex, his advice was — keep it going.

Mr. Young, an author, a television host and the pastor of the evangelical Fellowship Church, issued his call for a week of “congregational copulation” among married couples on Nov. 16, while pacing in front of a large bed. Sometimes he reclined on the paisley coverlet while flipping through a Bible, emphasizing his point that it is time for the church to put God back in the bed.

“Today we’re beginning this sexperiment, seven days of sex,” he said, with his characteristic mix of humor, showmanship and Scripture. “How to move from whining about the economy to whoopee!”

[From Pastor’s Advice for Better Marriage - More Sex - NYTimes.com]

Now here’s a pastor who has an idea that might entice a lot of dads back to church.

Here’s a link to send to your spouse, especially if you’re ready to try anything to get “sex” back in the phrase “sex life.” Mrs. Young (obviously a pseudonym), in her most recent column, as she always does, refers to the sagging love lives of new parents. She suggests reading such recent books as
365 Nights and Just Do It, both books on couples who made planned effort to have sex every day for an extended length of time. If you mentioned these books to your wife as well, you likely got the same nonplussed reaction I did. It sounded more like a desperate trick than a real romantic plan for greater intimacy.

Well, maybe then, this “challenge” from Cookie Magazine is more in the range of at least conceivable. First of all, it’s coming from a “girl magazine,” so it might have more street cred than if you leave a copy of Men’s Health lying around so that she sees their promotion of every other day ejaculation for a healthy prostate. Second, there’s a prize attached! Three days in Jamaica just for having sex seven times in seven days. Of course, the prize is a sweepstakes that will be won by some woman who has entered the contest without performing the requirements, but you don’t have to tell her that.

win a trip to jamaica! Enter for a chance to recharge your love life with a three-night stay at Jake’s in Jamaica. Airfare provided by

Air Jamaica. Also, take the Mrs. Young Sex Challenge Survey! [From Community: Cookiemag.com]

Definitely Maybe (Universal Studios)

I have a major problem with the PG warning. It provides so little guidance for parents as to what actually is in a movie. I will let my 8 year-old daughter watch many PG-rated movies, especially if we’re on a plane or even if the theme looks romantic but somewhat adult. At this age, she pretty much ignores what she doesn’t understand, though that is changing very quickly. There is so little time these days, that often, as parents, you end up watching a movie with your child rather than pre-screening it to make sure it’s right. I’m not saying this is the optimum strategy, but sometimes it just happens. Last night, I got a major dose of why you always need to screen a movie, check our ratings, or go to CommonsenseMedia.org to get the complete scoop on a movie.

Definitely, Maybe is definitely a movie on which I should have done more research. While the plot idea seems like it would be cute: early middle-age man tells ten year old daughter how he met her mother and fell in love, their conversations are way too frank both for the main child character and for a little girl my daughter’s age. Within literally five minutes of the start of the film, the dad picks up his daughter at the first day of sex education at her school. Immediately, dialogue refers to “putting a penis in a vagina.” My daughter knows what these words mean, but I don’t think she’s yet heard them in this context, and I certainly didn’t want her to hear about them in this movie. We skipped ahead to the next scene, but it just went downhill from there. The movie was over in fifteen minutes.

Other difficult content includes more sex talk, reference to a threesome, lesbian affairs, and some in-bed kissing though no nudity. It’s just not good content for little kids, though nothing wilder than most teenagers have been exposed to on regular television.

All in all, a seemingly cute film for my wife and I to watch later, but not recommended for kids under about twelve.

Then you’ll have to read this funny “Modern Love” column in the New York Times.

More than a few of us have seen these ads in back of Esquire, Men’s Health, or Rolling Stone for a sex chair. The ads feature romp-some couples looking lasciviously over odd-shaped furniture destined, seemingly, for only one purpose. The mind reels. One doesn’t recall the availability or promiscuity of that type of furniture before marriage and kids.

Perhaps, as Lori Jakiela writes in this “Modern Love” column, the purchase of such a chair can bring excitement into the sex life of middle-age parents. LIke many such addled schemes, the idea comes after a few cocktails:

THE night we ordered the sex chair, we’d been drinking. Not a lot, but enough to make a sex chair seem like an investment, like junk bonds or an I.R.A.

[From The Plain, Unmarked Box Arrived - New York Times]

This is an astonishing, and funny read, if only for the insights into other peoples’ parental lives as they struggle to do what all of us do: shoehorn in moments of intimacy (sexual or otherwise) between bathing, feeding, and getting them to stay put in their little beds.

Geoff Wiliams, in a recent Parents magazine spells out the problems of sex after babies:

Not that I want to air our dirty laundry…. but my wife and I have gone weeks without doing the deed. Okay, if you must know, months. Many, many…

It’s preferable to quote Geoff since no one one wants to talk about this dirty (or not-dirty) little secret of married life. Despite all that you see on TV and read in books, very few people are leading the wild lives they lived, or wished they had lived, pre-kids.

My wife used to tell me about how her friends, who were married with young children, weren’t doing it. We would laugh heartily and be glad we weren’t them. Now, we are them. And I’m sure they’re laughing at us.

It might be about fatigue from work or from cleaning, wiping, and feeding, but even sex-wild couples find themselves falling asleep in the run-up to sex after babies.

That’s why smart sex-starved dads know there is no such thing as “let me just lie down with the kids a few minutes,” or “after we watch this one show,” or “just let me finish this one chapter in my book.” The moment is now… not that there’s really anything you can do about it. We’re just saying don’t be surprised if the phenomonon happens over and over again. As Geoff says:

I used to think people who had sex in unusual locations — on dining room tables and in airplane bathrooms — were thrill-seekers. Those couples are actually desperate, sleep-deprived parents… They know that if they try to do it anywhere near the bedroom, they’ll fall asleep.

or buy a copy of this month’s Men’s Health and leave page 64 open where she can see it.

Mens’ Health summarizes a bunch of stats that show why having some sex this week isn’t just a “guy thing,” but something you need to keep you in all around good shape. Among the statistics they quote:

• 11% decrease in the risk of prostate cancer if you have 8-12 orgasms per month
• 118 calories burned by a 180 pound man during one hour of foreplay. (if one is good, how about 2?)
• 50% DECREASE in risk of dying of heart disease if you have at least 2 orgasms per week
• 30% increase in immunity if you have intercourse more than twice a week.
• 143 muscles required to have sex

Of course, most of this doesn’t actually require a helper, but we’re just saying, it wouldn’t be such a bad habit to regain, for your health, of course.

By the way, that heart disease statistic is a huge motivator.