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The Sex Factor > Mum and Dad in the next room
By Dr. Cal Paterson
September 6, 2010
By Dr. Cal Paterson
September 6, 2010
Sex. Have I got your attention? Then read on: The original name of the Mums on the Go website was The Yummy Mummy Guide’. So let me ask: can there be such a thing as a sexy mum? Can sexuality and parenthood be combined, and if so, how?
Think of the times in your life when the two intersected. Did either of your parents sit you down to talk about ‘the birds and the bees’? Was that an uncomfortable conversation for you both? Why?
Perhaps the secret of great ‘mum and dad’ sex is to first work out how to live with your status as a parent.
For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run - as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears - in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small
he has to screw them on, which one day may make him wonder
about the mental capacity of baseball players -
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.
In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across his little, startling muscled body -
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.
Galway Kinnell: “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps”
Kinnell has gathered up sex (‘stifled come-cry’), parenthood (‘flops down between us’), the love of one’s child (‘we look at each other and smile’), the love of one’s partner (‘familiar touch of the long-married’), not to mention the odd phallic symbol (baseball, anyone?), and woven them together to produce what is, at second or third glance, one of the more beautiful poems I’ve yet read. It’s all very well for Galway, though: how do YOU weave together sex and parenthood? How do you feel, reading about two post-coital lovers naked in their bed, with the product of their very lovemaking lying smiling between them?
Kinnell makes the point that the child is instinctively returning to ‘the ground of his making’, i.e. the marital bed. How do you share the love between yourself, your partner, and your kids? What do you feel you’ve lost in becoming a mother, apart from a solid pelvic floor? Can you still have sex if there isn’t any innocence to it? This challenge is being reconciled by new parents across the country.
Is it good for you? Let us know.
Dr. Cal Paterson
Clinical Psychologist
www.whychange.com.au
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