Do married people have sex

The Times A generation of parents may be paying the price for putting sex at the bottom of their ‘to do’ list.My seven-year-old asked me on a crowded commuter train last week

: “Are you going to have sex tonight, Mummy?” The carriage fell silent. “Or do you just do it when you are having a baby?”

Sex and marriage should go together like a horse and carriage. Two people fall in love and spend the rest of their lives in the same bed. The opportunities for procreation are endless. Take 365 days for 40 years and do the sums. Yet somehow it doesn’t always work out that way.

“Once upon a time having sex before marriage made women feel guilty and cheap. Well, these days not having sex after marriage is making women feel guilty and cheap,” the novelist Kathy Lette says. “All the exhausted working mum really wants in bed now is breakfast.”

A relationship used to be consummated on honeymoon and a wife’s duty was to ensure that her husband remained fulfilled. Now for many married women sexual freedom is the freedom to say no to their partners. How did it all happen? Work is one problem. Bosses have an irritating way of expecting you to be in the office before 9am; the more senior you are the worse it gets.
Children are the other natural contraceptive. If you look at networking sites for mothers, these women are obsessed by how little nookie they are getting. Their husbands are even more concerned, with dozens of men joining debates to inquire how much/little sex is normal.

There also seem to be two camps. There are the mothers who compete to compare how little sex they have had now that they are lactating, sleep-deprived and have a muffin top to rival a Starbucks offering. Then there are the smug perfectionists, headed by the woman who had sex half an hour after her baby was born while the midwife popped out to find the scales. They want to prove that they can be the perfect wife, mother, businesswoman and lover.

Which are you? The Times, together with Alpha Mummy, our parenting blog found at timesonline.co.uk/alphamummy, is launching its annual survey today to discover the state of Britain’s sex lives. Are you happy with the quality and the quantity? Has your partner had an affair? Jennifer Howze, who runs the blog says: “Sex, and its place in the hectic lives of working parents, has been one of our most popular and heated topics. In this frank, confidential survey, parents — and I mean fathers too — can tell us what’s really going on with them and join the conversation.”

Justine Roberts, cofounder of mums.net, says it’s a big topic for her bloggers too. “Emotionally and physically, bringing up young children is exhausting. Many mothers’ biggest craving is sleep and peace, not another scheduled activity.” One “seldom sex” wife is unashamed about having sex once a year but feels that she can’t give her name because it would embarrass her man. “It’s ridiculous to expect everyone to want to behave like rampant teenagers all their lives. I have the most amazing, tender relationship but it doesn’t need sex to validate it,” she says. Another mother is writing her own Frigid Jones’s Diary to try to break “the taboo”, explaining that sex just fell off her “to do” list now that she is juggling three children, a dog and a part-time career.

The sex expert Dr Pam Spurr is concerned: “You can maintain a strong union through shared hobbies, interests and children but the problem arises when couples have differing libidos.” “Of course,” scream most men I know. None of them has been put off by ringside seats at messy births. “Watching my wife give birth makes me more in awe of her, not less, so I wanted sex with her as soon as possible. I couldn’t understand why she was worried about her tummy,” one male friend says. Another explains: “When you have children you spend more time at home so it’s the perfect opportunity for more sex.”

Pamela Druckerman, the author of Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee, says that the British cheat more than the Americans or French because British women don’t take marital sex seriously enough. British women don’t want to work at their relationships in general and the sexual side in particular — a French friend of mine, by contrast, ensures that she makes love with her husband three times a week at an absolute minimum.

Caroline Castelnau, a French mother of two, agrees. “You make brilliant mothers but lousy wives. You need to be more mysterious to your husbands and stop sitting on the toilet in front of them.”

“Hotel rooms are the answer,” says one colleague with teenage children. “Habit,” says another. Esther Perel, the American authority on sexless relationships and the author of Mating in Captivity, is on a mission to inject some heat into monogamy. She advocates more child-free holidays and more spontaneity — hard if you are following Gina Ford’s childcare principles with their emphasis on the importance of routine. “Mothers give children all their sensuality, humour and affection but on the list of what it takes to raise a happy child, parents with a good sex life should be there,” she advises.

Elderly people definitely think that married couples should be having more sex. John Betjeman, the former Poet Laureate known for his wistful world view, was asked at the end of his life whether there was anything he regretted. “Not enough sex,” he said. If you ask pensioners, nine tenths of whom have been married, they would agree. In 2006, when 1,500 were asked what they would change if they could have their lives again, 70 per cent said they would have more sex. It’s free, after all, when you are married, and it should come with no strings attached. So, as Lette says, after he’s brought you breakfast in bed, you should consider having him for lunch.

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