How to have more sex

Canadian sex educator Robin Milhausen has some advice on how to bring sexy back after you’ve had kids

Sandra E. Martin,

Originally published in Today's Parent February 2012

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Do you have seven minutes? Then you have enough time for sex, says Robin Milhausen, a sexuality educator and prof at the University of Guelph in Ontario, whose research has beenpresented internationally. Not just take-one-for-the-team sex, or I-feel-guilty-because-he-did-daycare-drop-off-all-week sex. But the kind that culminates in the big O — yes, for both of you.

“Seven to 20 minutes is the approximate duration of sex,” she notes. Heck, that’s less time than it takes to do the dishes or vacuum cheese popcorn out of the playroom rug. And while some parents we talked to say their sex life is satisfying, even hot, most report a sharp downturn in between-the-sheets action post-kids. So what’s holding so many of us back?

“If we were having better, more satisfying sex, we would be having more of it,” Milhausen says, quoting studies that found fewer than 30 percent of women regularly have orgasms during sex with a partner. She thinks there are a few reasons for this. For starters, women are “anatomically disadvantaged” — the way our parts are arranged makes the mechanics of getting to orgasm way less of a sure thing than it is for most men. Second, it takes a lot to get us in the mood; there are more than 300 factors that impact a woman’s arousal (and, yes, worrying about what you have to do at work tomorrow is one of them).

OK, but presumably most of us thought sex was worth seven to 20 minutes of our time before the kids came along — that’s how we ended up with kids in the first place.

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