CARNAL NATION

"Oh, we're not having sex," said my friend S. when I asked about the state of the love life post-baby. "We made a decision to put the baby front & center while Beth was in med school and residency and put us as a couple on the back burner. When Beth does have a break, we choose to have her spend that "extra" energy on connecting with the kid. We both feel like we get the biggest payback from making it family time, and when we are through with residency, we can try to be better at making individual and grownup time—for sex, talking, vacations, haircuts, whatever."

Expected—normal—as it is for sex to fall off the parental must-do list during the baby and toddler years (S's son is turning 3), surely it's rare for a couple to make such a clear-headed decision to leave it off the list? Isn't it more common to promise and fail and feel guilty, or to blame the partner for not helping enough? And then everyone promises to try harder, only to once again succumb to exhaustion and the desire for a little down time. Would their decision seem less surprising if I added that "S" stands for Sarah and that, like her wife Beth, Sarah is (at least nominally) a girl?

I actually think it would. Not that I don't expect my lesbian friends to have sex, even the ones in long-term partnerships or marriages, like Sarah's. They do! I want them to! But I do agree with Lauren, another old friend and lesbimom, who says she can't really imagine a straight couple choosing that arrangement: "But would they admit it if they did?" she wonders. "I can't picture a straight guy being honest about sex taking a back seat to parenting for (more than) a year. I mean, that might be exactly what's happening, and maybe even by agreement, but I can't see a guy admitting it to anybody."

Me either, but not so much because men require some irreducible daily sex value, like vitamins, and not solely due to pride or even libido. Mostly it seems a stretch because men (this is the first of many statements here for which the reader would do well to add her own "most," "some," or "may" to statements that sound horribly stereotyping but really aren't meant to) often find emotional connection through sex while women need the feeling of connection in order to feel sexual in the first place.

I ran my friends' agreement past Laura Goldberger, a therapist and lesbian mother of two who sees nontraditional families in her practice. She does think a couple like Sarah and Beth (whose arrangement surprised her, too) may be happier than a similarly situated male/female couple because they are accepting the way things are and doing it on purpose. She also agrees that women often require the warm fuzzies of interpersonal connection before they feel inspired to move on from "warm" to "hot."

Since that connection can get frayed and even severed by the stress and exhaustion and just plain too-busy-ness that comes home with the baby along with the adorable toesies and the sweet smell of their downy heads, she keeps busy helping couples reforge bonds.  I add that while there is nothing about the longing for connection that's especially specific to lesbians, there is a kind of irony in the fact that two women are just as likely to find themselves undone by too much partnership as by too little, sometimes simultaneously.