Survey Results: Sex, Divorce and Infidelity After Baby

Having a baby can mess with your sex life. I spoke to people to find out how bad it really was, and why.

I’m breaking the last taboo: let’s talk about moms and dads having sex. (Don’t worry, not yours, who we all know only had sex once to conceive you; perhaps a few more times to conceive your siblings.)

This week on Twitter, I unlocked an achievement I never thought possible: I created a thread which spawned a top-tier Twitter Main Character. It all started when I quote-tweeted this take about divorce in the two years after a baby:

I then received the following reply. This person was dragged so hard that they deleted their account, and as obnoxious as this is, I want to respect their privacy by not including their username.

Okay, so obviously a lot going on here:

• It’s one thing to be horny during the postpartum period, but to be this despondent and understanding of infidelity is a bit silly. I’ve talked to single men for my research who haven’t had sex in five years, and they somehow manage to be more level-headed about it.

• It’s understandable to be blindsided by just how much a new baby can take up your spouse’s attention, especially if you’re a man and not experiencing the same bond with the baby that your wife is (because of breastfeeding, typically.) It can hurt to feel rejected, even if it’s a bit “selfish” to feel that way. We can’t help how we feel.

• HOWEVER, if your conclusion is “Baby is easy,” it’s safe to say the reason you’re not involved in the dynamic is you aren’t actually helping at all. Maybe that’s why she’s ignoring you!

Anyway, as is the fate for all Main Characters, people went into this guy’s post history and discovered all sorts of anti-semitic stuff (many such cases, naturally.)

But it got me thinking. I wanted to hear from people in the postpartum period (or people who wanted to talk about their previous postpartum period) and how it affected their sex life. But I don’t like to DM, and I’m wary of the fact that people don’t want to speak about these things using their real Twitter account. So naturally, I created a survey!

I had to hop on this fast to stay current with the discourse but I’m pleased that over 300 people filled out the survey. I know that’s not a gigantic sample size, but I was also able to get a lot of long-form stories from these people, which gave me a really good idea of the variety of postpartum experiences that couples have. This survey might lean a bit toward people who had negative experiences with their marriages in the postpartum phase, but it’s hard to say.

I want to reiterate that the 6-week period after birth is a time when it’s medically unsafe to have vaginal intercourse (and in some cases, depending on the circumstances of delivery, this period can be longer.) Sure, you can do “other things” but it makes sense to be too exhausted to do anything other than take care of a baby who relies on you to survive. Most of the people who shared their stories weren’t losing it over a 6-week period of abstinence, but a long period of months (sometimes for medical reasons, sometimes not.)

In this article we’re going to get into questions such as:

• Who cheats more, and how often?

• Who divorces more, and why?

• How often do people think of divorcing or cheating without doing it?

• How do men and women feel about sex during this time?

• Can you expect things to get better?

So anyway, here’s a little bit about who filled it out.

The Dataset

This was the breakout of the gender identity of the people who responded. Note that some of these percentages might not be totally consistent because I didn’t require answers to all the questions.

This was the breakout of the ages of the people who responded:

Most people responding were currently, or had been, married to the person with whom they had children (95% married vs. 5% never married)

Of those who were married originally, 15 got divorced during or soon after the two postpartum years. I should clarify that because the questions weren’t all required, it’s possible that more than 15 got divorced, and just didn’t answer this question. In some of the other questions about divorce, it looked like about 20 people actually had gotten divorced but some skipped this question.

However, a larger percentage at least contemplated divorce during this time. 4 men and 2 women reported being tempted to cheat as well, although not necessarily going through with it.

Divorce was filed overwhelmingly by women:

I then asked participants to select any reasons for of the divorce (this includes both people whose spouse divorced them and people who filed for divorce themselves.)