Childbirth: Both parents experience Surges in Sexuality

Partners of new mothers often experience shifts in sexuality, and these shifts are often unrelated to biological or medical factors pertaining to childbirth.

The findings, which are published in a recent issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, expand current understanding of postpartum sexuality, and may help health professionals as they counsel new parents.

Research on postpartum sexuality has typically focused on female reproductive biology in birth mothers—for example, how hormonal changes that accompany pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding affect sexual desire, or how birth-related interventions affect sexual activity.

Few studies have looked at sexuality in the partners of postpartum women, even though it may be important for postpartum women's perceptions of their own sexuality.

Sari van Anders

Sari van Anders, PhD, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and her colleagues designed a study to examine postpartum sexuality as a social and relational process, focusing on co-parents.

A total of 114 partners (95 men, 18 women, 1 unspecified) of postpartum women completed an online questionnaire about their sexuality during the three months following their youngest child's birth.

Attention was paid to physical, social, psychological, and relational experiences.

The researchers found that partners experience shifts in sexuality, just as birth mothers do. The changes that they experienced were linked to relational and social processes, not just biological or medical factors.

In fact, low desire in partners was largely influenced by factors related to caring for a new baby—such as fatigue and stress—rather than by factors related to the birth and/or birth mother, as more typically presumed.

"Our findings help to clarify how co-parents experience sexuality in myriad ways that are contextualized within partner and parenting relationships," said Dr. van Anders.

"What is of note is that we have come to recognize that sexual health of one partner may be related to the sexual health of the other, no matter the cause of the change in sexuality. It is important to publish studies in all aspects of sexual health," explained Irwin Goldstein, editor-in-chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

More information: "Exploring co-parent experiences of sexuality in the first 3 months after birth." Sari M. van Anders, Lauren E. Hipp, and Lisa Kane Low. The Journal of Sexual Medicine; Published Online: August 1, 2013 DOI: 10.1111/jsm.12194

Eye test detects sexual orientation

Although there was a popular belief that sexual orientation can be revealed by pupil dilation in response to attraction, there was no scientific evidence until now.

For the first time, researchers at Cornell University used a specialized infrared lens to measure pupillary changes to participants watching erotic videos.

Their findings are published August 3 in the journal PloS ONE.

Previous research explored these mechanisms either by simply asking people about their sexuality or by using such physiological measures as assessing their genital arousal. These methods, however, come with substantial problems.

“We wanted to find an alternative measure that would be an automatic indication of sexual orientation but without being as invasive as previous measures. Pupillary responses are exactly that,” says Gerulf Rieger, lead author and Cornell postdoctoral associate, who conducted the study with Ritch C. Savin-Williams, professor of human development and director of the Sex and Gender Lab.

“With this new technology, we are able to explore sexual orientation of people who would never participate in a study on genital arousal, such as people from traditional cultures,” says Rieger. “This will give us a much better understanding how sexuality is expressed across the planet.”

The new study adds considerably more to the field of sexuality research than just a new measurement, say the authors.

As expected, heterosexual men showed strong pupillary responses to sexual videos of women, and little to men; heterosexual women, however, showed pupillary responses to both sexes.

This result confirms previous research suggesting that women and men’s sexuality work differently.

Straight from the Source DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040256