Building relationships is more important than men’s desires

THE detail about the pelvic exercises got to me. Last Saturday’s Irish Examiner carried an article by the UK social scientist Catherine Hakim extolling the virtues of the relatively casual French attitude to married peoples’ affairs and the centrality of sex to French life.

Building relationships is more important than men’s desires

“The importance of sexuality is attested to by the fact that French hospitals automatically give mothers of newborns lessons in pelvic exercises before they leave hospital to ensure that newborn mothers get back into shape for love-making as soon as possible”, wrote Hakim. In her book, The New Rules: Internet, Playfairs and Erotic Power, she specifies that “as soon as possible” means after six weeks.

So whose priority is the love-making? The newly-delivered mother who may still be bleeding, sore and exhausted from being up all night feeding her baby? Or her man’s? Is Hakim’s argument that the French emphasis on sex and tolerance of affairs is liberating actually a manifesto for French machismo?

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