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You're familiar with Esther Perel and Mating in Captivity. She talks about switching gears from being a wife and mother—a caregiver, to being a sexual partner and a woman. Would you agree it's an effort?

Yeah, I think that's a real challenge. My experience was a little different in that I was in graduate school when I had my first baby and I didn't have any help. I thought I wanted four children, and I thought that this whole motherhood thing was just going to be so fulfilling and my doctoral studies would just sort of disappear, and that this would be it. In fact, it was really difficult and those were some really dark days when the kids were super young. So, my husband would get home and I literally would be like, 'We have to go to the bedroom right now and do this' because it was the way I was maintaining some semblance of self that wasn't totally eclipsed by the baby. At the end of a long day of chatting with moms at the park or going to a play group or going to Gymboree, or whatever my day had been full of—and lots and lots of conversation, very important conversation about how to get the baby to sleep through the night, or how to get your body back—I just felt like I needed to be an adult. Frankly, sex is a very efficient way to feel like that.

So, as long as it's on the woman's terms, and you don't feel like you're only pleasing your man or something, I think it's a very powerful way to switch gears. Oftentimes, that would be something that would happen right when he would get home. Which, I think, sometimes he would be like, "Whoa, I think I need to say hi to the kids," and I'm like, "There will be time for that!" It was just very important for me to feel like I was still a wife and a woman, not just a mother. So, I think it's difficult to switch gears. And there's all that stuff in the 1950's about how you're supposed to change outfits and put on some make-up before your husband gets home and make sure that you don't just talk about your day. I was enraged when I first read some of that stuff, but I also feel like there's something to be said for the woman. I'm certainly not advocating putting on make-up when your husband arrives home, but if you can do something to make yourself feel like you're out of the mom mode and into a different mode. I actually think that's very important for the woman as well, just for your sense of self.

Women are actually in a pretty good bargaining position here. I think the standard thing is that the husband is sort of ready to go and the woman is not. If you can bargain with your husband and say, "I'm more than happy to spend a half-hour in the bedroom with you, but I need to take a walk around the block first, or I get to have a glass of wine and go out and look at a magazine on the porch for 20 minutes. Or, I get a soak in the tub afterward, or you take the kids to the park for a half-hour." I think that there can be some bargaining. If you can have some of those needs met, then you're more likely to feel in the mood or feel like you're wanting to respond well to some sort of sexual nuance. There is that importance of putting yourself first, and putting your needs as a woman first, ahead of the kids or the dinner, or whatever.