E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSThe fertility rate is dropping, statistics say. People are simply having fewer children. Experts think the reason can be traced to financial planning by would-be parents wary of their futures.
But is that really the case? Do couples really behave this rationally? A large percentage of all pregnancies are unplanned, so isn’t it also possible that stress, anxiety, boredom, and damaged relationships brought on by economic gloom and doom are simply killing the national sex life?
While some couples no doubt do plan carefully, and opt to delay having children until sunnier days arrive, says psychologist, therapist and TODAY contributor Gail Saltz, people are also preoccupied with money worries. She senses that many more people are experiencing anxiety and stress, and possibly depression, because of the economic pressure of the past four years.
“And when people are worried, they don’t feel like having sex,” she explained. “This is especially true for women. It is darn near impossible for a woman to have an orgasm if she is terribly anxious. A woman can physically have sex, but desire, arousal, orgasm, everything across the board is affected.”
Picture the couple who’s scrimping and saving to make ends meet. They’ve cut out restaurant dinners, movie tickets, vacations, theater-going. They’re sitting in front of the TV in sweatpants watching another episode of “NCIS” or “30 Rock.” They look at each other think, "My God, the last thing I want to do is have sex with this person."
“If you can’t spend any money doing anything fun, if that’s sucked out of the relationship, too, you’ve got no novelty, no playtime,” Saltz explained. Both are critical to stoking libido.
Finally, there’s the inevitable sniping between partners. “Money is the number one thing people fight about,” Saltz said, “but you don’t even have to disagree about it. If you are anxious or one partner is depressed, well, that’s the person you are intimate with and so it gets taken out on you. You have to negotiate it all, and then, no, you don’t really feel like having sex.”
So it’s probably not only considered financial planning that’s responsible for the drop in birth rates – a drop that also occurred during the Great Depression, by the way. Maybe it’s that America is stressed out, bored, and more than a little cranky.
Related content:
Unrelenting sex drive may signal deadly rabies
Mind-blowing sex can actually wipe your memory clean
Birth rate for teens, young women hits new lows
Leave a Comment:
Nonsense. not mine.
Nothing like a brand new sports car to have a real orgasm...forget the sex
No money-NO Honey!!!
"The basic fact of life"!
You wouldn't believe how much more of a turn-on money is these days than it has always been, with the economy the way it is...I can just dangle the keys of my Maserati and women flock to me like I'm a piece of prime meat. It has never been easier to have a harem of beautiful women -- if you're part of the top 1%.
Wow. Just wow. Who's more shallow, the women you pick up, or you?
Both.
And I bet his Maserati is actually an '88 Honda Civic and what he dangles is a $20 bill in a back alley. = )
"Picture the couple who’s scrimping and saving to make ends meet. They’ve cut out restaurant dinners, movie tickets, vacations, theater-going. They’re sitting in front of the TV in sweatpants watching another episode of “NCIS” or “30 Rock.” They look at each other think, "My God, the last thing I want to do is have sex with this person." LOL. That's FUNNY!
@The Land Shark
Quit the jealousy and strive to reach our top 1% level...you wouldn't believe how great life is.
@catastic-2773825
Newsflash... gratuitous sex with beautiful women is supposed to be a shallow activity. This is a perk of being rich.
Methinks generali is actually some overweight, unwashed mole-man who lives an active fantasy life in his parents' basement, looking forward to ComiCon. That's the one day a year when he can peel his lips off the barrel of a loaded gun and spend half the day adjusting his eyes to sunlight.
Obama's war on prosperity continues, and the promise of "hope and change" has become the harsh and bitter reality of economic despair and broken dreams. This administration has created the perception that it is hostile toward business, thus impeding investment, growth and hiring, and that produces a forestalling of normal economic recovery.
Unfortunately, economic stress affects nearly every aspect of peoples' lives, and the most disappointing part is....Obama doesn't even seem to care. How anyone in their right mind could want this man re-elected, is completely beyond my comprehension.
@Up Uranus
There's nothing more enjoyable than delighting in the jealous wrath of the worthless underclass. If you would use your imagination for something useful, maybe just maybe you could get out of the slums.
Oh, but I enjoy the slums. Whilst I'm lying in the gutter I'm looking at the stars.
at least you're a good sport...now work hard, make moolah, and you too can bang hot chicks left and right...this is the American dream after all
Sorry genareli, banging hot chicks isn't for me. I'll leave them all for you. :)
For being a good sport, I'll send some your way
@Up Uranus
Gay?
Why, are you asking me out on a date? ;)
LOL...no, your ID and comments sounded like you might be. This is msnbc.com after all!
This may be the BEST news - the "Lemonade", if you will, originating from a "Lemon" economy, world-wide.
SOMETHING drastic has to happen to STOP the continued suffering/agonizing slow deaths of total innocents caused by a SEVEN (7) BILLION PEOPLE OVERPOPULATED WORLD!
I think the difference is that they do more with less. They somehow manage to be resourceful and make it work. That's how it is when you are poor.
I completely agree.
So many elements in our society are based on growth. Without this constant growth, things break down. How can this be? How can such a system be maintained indefinitely? We live in a closed system, there is no other place to go.
What is necessary is a new frame of mind, a new way of looking at things. The ideal should be balance, and the economy, government and society should be geared towards this.
People should not look at controlled growth, but controlled shrinkage.
The recession we are in now might be as bad as the one in the thirties, maybe worse. And hopefully, one day, it will recover. But not before a large amount of calamity and heart-ache. Controlled shrinkage would allow for the same thing to happen, but without the suffering.
I think your "fact" is incorrect. Look at the bottom of the economic ladder, especially with the hispanics, and they are still having 3-5 children. They have no money and are getting plenty of honey. I know a family of mexican immigrants that only the dad works and makes $13 an hour and they have 5 kids. How they do it I will never know. I'm sure some of my tax money is going into their pockets.
these people need to learn how to keep it zipped. there are already too many of them.
No, my sex life was already dead before the Bush Depression...
Hmmm, let's see. Six years ago we were... agonizing the stolen election and disbelief that americans actually WANTED W. Bush to return to the White House. Yes, I can confirm the results of this research. Republican pillaging leads to - not only deflated economy, but also - deflated sex drive.
Sex is a naturally recurring but temporary drive in human beings. It's probably tied to biorhythms or something. Also, external stimuli can force its turning on and off. I think that anxiety normally fuels the sex drive, but when you're worried for your own [physical] survival, that counteracts the sex drive. Nevertheless, when there seem to be no way out and no end to the suffering, people will look for escape (forget about their problems) -- they will drink more alcohol, smoke more cigarettes, do more street drugs... provided there is enough money to do so. And sex is very much like a drug... it provides effective distraction during stimulation and temporary sedation after orgasm. But the "high" of sex doesn't last that long, and it can be quite physically draining on the body's resources. Eventually, a person will turn his/his priorities to that of survival, which he or she will no longer be able to ignore. So, I think that initially, there may be a spike in sexual arousal, but it will diminish over time during a period where one's [physical] survival is at stake, especially as one starts to actually run out of money and actually start to starve and the body needs to conserve energy and resources rather than use them.
This is a dumb article. This woman "senses" there's a problem? Now there's some hard science for ya!
Seems like it is the poor people who have lots of kids.
Gotta love the child tax credit.
mostly out of ignorance or adherence to the Catholic church that does not understand the concept of "enough kids already."
hey, when you're married and money is tight, what else is there to do? ;-)
That's what I was thinking...grab a six-pack, put on a movie you've seen a billion times so that when you're done getting laid, you haven't missed anything...works for me.
So this doesn't explain my frigid wife who was sexless in the boom times as well. Although, I do agree with looking at her in a sweat shirt & sweat pants sitting on her a$$ watching NCIS and wondering why I ever thought I wanted to have sex with that sack of potatoes.
sheesh , you sound like the a$$..no wonder she won't put out for you.
flush her down the toilet...pump and dump is the only way to live
At least genareli is honest...got to give him that!
An article listed just after this on the front page in the Tech & Science section seems to offer a possible solution to possible sexual disfunction:
Nook Tablet review: Great hardware, stiff competition
My wife and I love NCIS and we still flirt and want to jump each others bones. And we are in our late 40s.
Most movies aren't worth a crap and are a waste of money. We don't go out to eat that often but we never have.
You've got to take 20 year old bimbos out for a test drive sometime...but beware to lease only, don't buy.
It's the evolution at work, if you don't have the means to survive you won't produce successful offspring. It's just nature folks, and the top 1-percenter is winning the game. How about you take them out of the equation and then perhaps your chance will go up.
Somehow I'm not convinced. Sex is a great stress-reliever so there must be more sex, not less. What there must be more is precaution so as not to get pregnant in this crappy situation.
The economy is killing us in general. I know several people that have died of depression and suicide in the last four years over their bankrupsies. All I can say is a pox on all the houses of these congressional and white house people that have gone over to the greed side. That especially goes for Mitch McConnell, his wife Elane Chow, Phil Grham and his wife. I'm waiting for some of them to get indited and I am saving for a keger party to celebrate. Kentucky will soon come to a crossroads. If they vote McConnell in again I'm moving.
I go to the trailer park on Friday nights with a 20 dollar bill and a bottle of ripple and I am THE MAN!!!!
Priceless, Einstein. Aptly named. lmao
Einstein, that is one of the best comments I've seen a while!
Hooray. Now I have a legitimate excuse for not getting laid as often. "It's the economy, stupid". roflmao
If this article is really correct then WHY are there so many dead-beat baby-daddies running the streets and so many unwed mothers living in 'the ghetto'??
Well DTrent,
If you are an unwed mother living in "the Ghetto" you can get welfare from the state. Why work when you can get screwed and paid for it and receive welfare all at the same time?
@genareli I hate to have to tell you this but the "worthless underclass" as you put it, has made your life the comfortable, lazy, existence it is today. Your Maserati? Created by the underclass. The people that make your food? Underclass. It's thanks to us that you're in the position you are. So, cheers mate.