ColumnHow do you maintain passion and pleasure in a romantic partnership, while at the same time navigating the ins and outs of parenting?

As a weekly relationships columnist, I regularly receive love inquiries that range from the philosophical to the salacious. This week, my friend Rachel sent an intriguing letter, asking me to ruminate on baby-making and romance: “Is it possible to maintain passion and pleasure, while at the same time parenting with a long-term  partner?”

Rachel’s question prompted me to do some detective work, investigating the nature of sex, reproduction, and its manifold meanings. From mating monkeys to full-time daddies, I’ve gathered eight sociological and biological facts to help shed some light on the confounding roles of intimacy, breeding, and the creation of culture.

1. Historically, coupledom has been an economic and societal compact; the partner’s personal needs, such as emotional well-being, sexual satisfaction, and intellectual stimulation, have long come second place. In days of yore, the survival of the marriage contract trumped an individual’s quality of life. In some ways, a miserable marriage was a good marriage, so long as it stayed intact. Modern relationships couldn’t be more different – people seek partners who challenge and excite them and they’re searching for romance that’s mutually enriching.

2. Sexless marriage, anyone? On average, married women and men who are more than 30-years-old have sex only 58 times per year. That’s about a shag a week. For the under-30 set, the number doubles, coming in at 111 times a year. For some spouses, it’s much harder, with estimates pegging 15% of married couples as sexless for as much as one year.

3. In all the animal kingdom, seahorses are the only genus in which the male gets pregnant – the female injects eggs into her lover’s pouch, and it’s here where the eggs are fertilized and nurtured until delivery. In no small feat, the male can deliver up to 1,000 babies in one go. Seahorses also happen to be traditional romantics, with many species faithful to their filly for life, (not even a tank full of available seahorse singles will tempt a loyal pair). When they mate, the couple link tails; for the duration of their love-making, the seahorses are inseparable, engaging in a whirling dervish dance amongst the sea grass and coral reefs.

4. In the past few years, the tides have turned in the U.S. For the first time ever, married couples comprise less than half of all American households. Belonging to a loving, supportive relationship is now widely regarded as healthier than being in a bleak, agonizing marriage. In the modern, cosmopolitan consciousness, love, commitment, and companionship carry more weight than a legal document. The real fun lies in the adventure.

5. We humans aren’t all that special, sharing between 95-99% functional DNA with our close cousin the Bonobo. If you think people can be merciless when it comes to harnessing sex as a tool for manipulation, why don’t you go visit your evolutionary kin for the day? For Bonobos, sexual contact is used for everything from same-sex conflict-resolution to calming infants. They have sex to release tension, sex to leaven antagonism, and sex to have fun and socialize. A promiscuous bunch, Bonobos have multiple partners, and because the women are sleeping around, the males aren’t sure which children belong to them. Obscure paternity goes a long way toward the prevention of infanticide. Doesn’t it all smack of a Shakespearean tragedy?

6. Men who are dominant in work and relationships have trouble accurately “reading” emotions when looking at pictures of people’s faces. In short, powerful men can have trouble measuring and responding to the needs of others. Studies of group behavior indicate that people tend to choose the most outspoken, arrogant individual as the leader of a group. And, once at the top, the man’s experience of dominance only reinforces his self-centeredness.

7. In Sweden, 85% of the fathers take paternal leave from their jobs and if they don’t, they face scrutiny from their friends and colleagues. Could the Swedish model signal an emergent “new masculinity?” Since the paternity-leave policy was implemented, divorce and separation rates have dropped; it’s possible that when men engage in the day-to-day requirements of parenting, they understand better the challenges of being at home with a child. The idea supporting this Swedish policy is that society mirrors the family – in order to achieve equality in society, equality must first be achieved in the home.

8. Why humans make babies isn’t mysterious. We do so because evolution and biology trigger sexual desire, sexual desire results in children and children result in the perpetuation of our species. But when considering the lived experience of actual individuals, baby-making is anathema to our quality of life. A host of academic papers demonstrate that parents are usually less happy than their childless peers; it turns out that raising children, across the board, reduces marital satisfaction. In Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman’s oft-cited study of working women, he found that childcare ranked almost last in pleasurability out of 19 activities. These women preferred many things to childcare, including exercising, shopping, and housework.

Images: Stacey Hedman Photography, cscott2006, Tela Chhe, Auswandern Malaysia, tab2_dawa, emilio labrador, chapmankj75, pulguita, mikebaird, the Italian voice

Nope, not like in the innocent ’50s and ’60s when the biggest thing to fear was the Boogie Man and The Blob. Not even like the ’70s, when middle class parents let their brood stay out on bikes in the ‘burbs until dark.

But was it really safer back then? If you buy into recent statistics, kids are actually as safe or safer now. A recent study by CCRC (Crimes Against Children Research Center) tells us sexual assault, bullying and other violence against children went down substantially between 2003 and 2008. Crime against grown ups is down too, although no one is quite sure why. Though experts are baffled and cannot put a finger on it, they can assert that media coverage is distorting our reality.

News programming must fill time. Thus, the media has a feeding frenzy with random acts of horror – Columbine bully revenge, abuse cases, molestation, neglect and the recent Tuscon, Arizona shooting spree that killed six people, including 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. As someone who has worked for a 24-hour news network, I can tell you the goal is brainstorming as many angles as possible.

The images we are bombarded with create a chilling effect, aptly addressed in the book Free- Range Kids by syndicated columnist, Lenore Skenazy. She preaches that walking kids home from bus stops and forcing them indoors out of fear of imminent stranger danger is not only harmful to their psyches but does nothing to protect them from the most common offenders – people the kids know and trust. Instead of draconian sex offender registries, she says we are ahead of the game when we train children to protect themselves.

“David Finkelhor, the head of CCRC, reminds us that by constantly focusing on strangers, we are looking in the wrong direction,” Skenazy tells me. “If you want to keep kids safe, teach them starting at age three to discern good and bad touches, that they don’t have to do something an adult says if it feels weird or creepy, and that you won’t be mad if they tell you that something happened.”

Skenazy shared in her book about letting her own 10-year-old ride the Long Island Rail by himself, and took flack from observers like Dr. Laura – the same kind of bad mommy flack Ayelet Waldman took for confessing she loved her husband more than her kids, or Amy Chua for her recent Tiger Mom tales of raising highly restricted yet successful Chinese kids. But Skenazy sticks to her guns, insisting the crime rate today is equal to what it was back in 1970 and it is a bigger danger to strip children of freedom to roam the range.

“If you were a child in the ’70s or the ’80s and were allowed to go visit your friend down the block, or ride your bike to the library, or play in the park without your parents accompanying you, your children are no less safe than you were,” she says. “But it feels so completely different, and we’re told that it’s completely different, and frankly, when I tell people that it’s the same, nobody believes me. We’re living in really safe times, and it’s hard to believe.”

So hard to believe, the author and blogger says her book isn’t selling as well as one that might hype stranger danger and the abductions and killings that might result. In terms of hyping, she points to the recent boom in baby snatching hysteria over the hospital crime involving a North Carolina woman who turned herself in after taking a baby from a New York hospital more than two decades ago.

“Now there are specials on television telling us how to protect ourselves from this terrible fate and what galls me is the fact some four million babies are born in hospitals and one is taken, so the tips they are giving us are erroneous,” complains Skenazy. “CNN keeps harping on the fact babies are usually taken when mothers are in the bathroom, but there is no usually. As a result, new mothers – no matter how tired or weak they are – must grab the baby into the bathroom, otherwise they are not being a good mom and protecting their child.”

The safeguarding now extends to the internet which is considered by many to be the most threatening modern day crime spot for minors, one that literally brings pornographers and predators into our homes. Schools too, try to take a bite out of slime by offering internet safety as part of parent education, reacting to programs like the Today Show which told us danger lurks just click away.

Does it mean the filters we install just aren’t working, or is it that, just as in the mall or at the bus stop, kids must be taught how to ignore the weirdos who cross their path?

“With increased access to and depth of the virtual world, the potential dangers change rather than getting simply safer or not,” points out David Abusch-Magder, head of Middle School at Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Francisco. “No one is going to get run over by a computer or shot by a stray bullet coming from the computer, so it’s really about educating and working with students to build a common vocabulary to understand the dangers and to monitor their use.”

Skenazy insists the web is just another avenue used by society to make children deathly afraid of all strangers, while the reality is the web is no different from other public places where informed kids should know how to avoid being taken in by someone they don’t know.

“Studies show the places kids are in danger on the web are the equivalent of the red light districts in real life, sexually oriented chat rooms and you are putting yourself in a comprising place by going there,” says Skenazy. “Just X out or ignore the freaks. I tell my kids the same things as in real life -you can talk to people but you can’t go with anyone you meet; you can give someone directions but you never go with them in their car.”

Our kids are also in danger when they ride with us in our cars – in fact, car crashes are the number one way kids are killed in the United States. But as Skenazy points out, we don’t go through paroxysms of self doubt when we drive them to the dentist.

“The fear becomes a template of all of our parenting,” she says. “The danger may be remote but we are bad parents, incredibly negligent if now protecting them every second of the day. That is what makes us crazy about letting our kids do anything.”

In fact, the Blessing of the Skinned Knee theory argues not coddling kids and giving them more freedom early on allows them to function once they flee the nest, something past generations enjoyed much more than our own children. There will always be crime but we can believe the statistics on random incidents of violence and overcome our template of fear. By doing so, our kids might be able to tell their own children stories about hanging out at the neighborhood park and riding bikes until dark.

Images: Cia de Foto, Jezblog

I used to make fun of people who drove Hummers. I would see those suburban road warriors taking up a lane and a half on the highway and I would say something rude and cutting about insecure twits who needed an off-road monster car to protect them from fender benders in a Whole Foods’ parking lot. I would speculate as to what type of “inadequacies” a man might be compensating for by wanting to drive a really big car. Oh, I was tough. Brutal even.

I wasn’t crazy about Suburbans or Escalades either, but I reserved a singular fury for the behemoth Hummers, unique even among big SUVs for their overkill and gas guzzling. Three times as big as a typical sport utility vehicle, with a frightening lack of emissions efficiency, these cars struck me as iconic symbols of waste, excess, and arrogant disregard for the atmosphere. But not anymore. Oh, how things have changed.

As I write this, Hummer has gone out of business, a victim of its own hubris and rising gas prices. In related news, sort of, my daughter has been driving for just under a year and my heart constricts every single time she pulls out of our driveway. There are a number of factors that worry me, but of particular concern are icy winter roads, other (stupid) drivers, and the gravitational pull of her cell phone. I am afraid that she will miss something in the blind spot, that treacherous dead zone where danger lurks, just out of sight.

It seems insane to me that a girl so young, so slight, so lacking in life and vehicular experience, should be allowed to hurl herself down weather impaired roads, with nothing between her and other cars but a dainty and insubstantial Honda Civic. I would like her in something bigger and stronger, something heavy and completely unyielding. I want her in a four wheel fortress.

Like any responsible parent, I have logged hours with my daughter in the car. We have practiced merging and lane changes, we’ve gone uphill and downhill in all kinds of weather, in daylight and dark. I have warned her till I’m hoarse and yet I still wonder: will she look away from the road to answer a text? Put on lip gloss? Will she lose control of her car while turning on an Ingrid Michaelson CD? This is a child who has mastered AP Calculus, but I’m not sure she’ll remember that oncoming traffic has the right-of -way when she’s making a left turn. She is a smart girl but she’s still a teenager, not too far removed from wearing braces and reading books about vampire love triangles.

If I can’t always be sitting next to her when she drives, then I want the car to step in and protect her for me. I want her car to be imposing. Scary. I want it to bully other cars on the road, show them who’s boss. And the fact is, emissions or not, if Hummer hadn’t gone out of business I would genuinely love to put her in one. It comforts me to imagine her in something big and tank-like, wearing a helmet, encased in bubble wrap and packed in with Styrofoam peanuts (still more environmental no-nos.) This makes me a hypocrite, I know, but from where I stand – at the intersection of mother love and civic responsibility – I would choose my daughter’s safety without a second thought. Yes, I want her to inherit a cleaner planet, but first I want her to emerge unscathed from her first years behind the wheel.

And the eco rage I once felt for the road-hogging cretins I used to berate? It’s still there, but it’s tucked away, hidden someplace where I don’t have to see it or deal with it. It’s in my blind spot.

Editor’s Note: Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Images: TheFriendlyFiend, fujisan3 (Mr.mt)

Don’t accuse me of sacrilege by pushing babies as mere accoutrement, but I see so many adorable baby slings out there, who needs a pretty purse with a pet chihuahua?

In fact, I’m almost ready to ready myself (and my uterus) for one of my own just so I can pick out a cute baby carrier. Almost.

With all the hoopla about attachment parenting and the positive potential for better everything if you carry your baby in a sling – how could I resist? But seriously, holding your little warm and cuddly close to your heart does sound sort of sensational, does it not?

It makes perfect sense that mommas everywhere are wearing their babies up close and personal. The benefits of babywearing include baby crying less and learning more – because living at mom and dad’s eye-level can’t help but involve and stimulate a baby more than laying or sitting in a crib or stroller.

Mod Mum Sling (above) – fawn&forest, $54.

How many times have you leaned down to interact with a baby? And if you aren’t leaning down, what does said baby experience? That’s right, your legs and a whole lot of nothing else. Being in a baby sling engages a baby rather than leaving it lonely.

And yes, I’ve read about the recalls and all I can say is tragic and troubling but please don’t throw away a wonderful way of connecting and being present for your baby without serious thought.

I believe being present is the best way to prevent such accidents from occurring, so please, if you plan to wear your baby in a sling, pay attention and stay connected, which is really the point, isn’t it?

Okay, now let’s have some fun and pick out the perfect accoutrement for your most precious accoutrement.

Market Sling (above) – Serena & Lily, $129.

Maya Wrap Ring Sling (above left) – Maya Wrap, $65.95.

Hemp Baby Ring Sling (above right) – Pretty Momma Sling, $92.

Mod Mum Sling (above) – fawn&forest, $54.

If the sling thing isn’t for you, ERGObaby makes a slew of front-carrier options that achieve the same positive effects as the sling.

ERGObaby Organic Carrier (above) – ERGObaby, $120-$148.

Moby Organic Stretchy Wrap (above left) – Peppermint, $59.95.

Beco Gemini Carrier (above right) – Peppermint, $129.

Market Sling (above) – Serena & Lily, $129.

Whether you fancy a ring, pouch, sling, wrap or front carrier, attaching your precious cargo to your body, leaving your hands free and fully focused, is simply smart and very present parenting. Try it with care.

A for Apple, B is for Beluga, C is for Chullo. Pretty baby!

Parents on planet Hollywood and elsewhere are headed in that fruity, foamy and woolly direction in declaring devotion to Mama Earth via naming their young.

In the roaring Nineties, when real estate and dot comers were soaring, we saw a return to the Old Testament with the names Sarah, Jacob, Rachel and Eli in vogue.

“Eve and Adam, please leave the great room until Mommy is finished closing her Genentech deal.”

Now that resources are scarcer than ever, green is the rule for everything cool. Nature-bound moms and dads can reference all good things from fiber foods and soothing teas to fair trade crafts and endangered species in getting that family branding just right.

Here is an A-to-Z reference guide on the eco-friendliest labels for your bouncing baby Gore:

Acai (boy) Agate (girl)

Boho (boy) Bark (girl)

Corky (boy) Coral (girl)

Deepak (boy) Dibbler (girl)

Energy (boy) Etsy (girl)

Free (boy) Flax (girl)

Gore (boy) Glacier (girl)

Hemp (boy) Henna (girl)

Indri (boy) Ivory (girl)

Jungle (boy) Jute (girl)

Kale (boy) Kharma (girl)

Leonardo (boy) Laurie David (girl)

Marsh (boy) Mauritius (girl)

Nash (boy) Nectar (girl)

Otter (boy) Oolong (girl)

Prius (boy) Polar (girl)

Quince (boy) Quantum (girl)

Rooibos (boy) Rummage (girl)

Stevia (boy) Sprig (girl)

Tiger (boy) Teak (girl)

Urban (boy) Urial (girl)

Vegan (boy) VivaTerra (girl)

Wolf (boy) Watson (girl)

Xeri (boy, girl)

Yosemite (boy) Yurt (girl)

Zen (boy) Zona (girl)

*For catchy middle names with eco associations, we at EcoSalon suggest: Bradley, Sara, Amy, Heather, Scott, Vanessa, Barrington, Derby, Fitzsimmons, Leigha or Katherine.

Share with us what you have namestormed!

Each week here at EcoSalon, the editors choose a post from the archives that we think you’ll love. The original post can be found here.

Image: Will Foster

You can’t go wrong with attachment parenting. It may be a relatively new practice in the Western world, but this type of parenting embraces the ancient art of maintaining a deep bond with your baby once he or she leaves the womb, allowing them to experience the world with a steady physical and emotional attachment to their parents. At its core, this style of parenting is as good for babies as it is for the earth. As a mother who is raising a toddler in this fashion with a newborn baby on the way, here’s why I believe attachment parenting is an amazing gift to children and the planet!

Some of the mainstays of the attachment parenting philosophy are: co-sleeping, babywearing, breastfeeding, parental interaction in place of toys, a gentle, realistic approach to discipline, and a back to basics mentality that puts the parent-child relationship above all else.

My daughter is almost three years-old, and I can honestly say that for the first two years of her life, I wondered whether I was doing the right thing by practicing attachment parenting. I have the luxury of working from home, so I have been able to dedicate this time to her upbringing; and while I have always known in my heart that I am making the right decisions raising her, there have been many naysayers, which have included close family members, along the way. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been up against. “Co-sleeping? You’re asking for trouble!” “You’re her slave!” “You need to get her out of that baby carrier, stat!” “Just let her cry, it’s good for babies to cry.” Thankfully, my husband and I have always been on the same page with regard to our parenting choices, and we have been each others support system when times are tough.

And the full circle result has come to fruition. We have a confident, highly intelligent, loved and lovable, independent and inquisitive little girl who has blossomed due to our commitment to attachment parenting. We not only chose this route for her benefit, we chose it with the intention of preserving the environment as well. Here are five reasons why attachment parenting is good for mother earth:

No Crib Required: You can skip the need for a big clunky crib and co-sleep safely with your baby, or opt for a co-sleeper that attaches to your bed. I wish we had known this beforehand, because we bought the crib and the fancy bedding, and it never got used!

Less Toys, More Parental Interaction: There’s no need to spend money or precious resources on toys with bells, whistles and sirens. What baby most wants is your time and attention, and the precious experience of learning your face and your voice. You can read her The New York Times for all she cares, as long as you’re enlightening her and engaging her with your presence. Not to say a few choice toys won’t be enjoyed and cherished, but you’re by far baby’s favorite playmate.

Getting Back To Basics Requires Less Gadgetry: Baby monitors and bouncy chairs be gone. If you keep your baby close to you at all times, you can do away with a whole category of baby gear designed to take care of your child in your absence.

Breastfeeding Saves Resources: Eliminate the need to purchase formula and the need to wash and use bottles regularly. If you’re able to breastfeed your baby, nursing is the healthiest, least expensive and most eco-friendly way to nourish and bond with your baby.

The Art of Babywearing: Ditch the stroller and wear your baby close to your heart in an organic baby carrier. She’ll love seeing the world from your perspective, and you’ll be able to teach her and share with her much more readily when she is in such close proximity to you. My favorite baby carrier is the ERGOBaby Organic Baby Carrier.

For more information on Attachment Parenting visit Attachment Parenting International and Ask Dr.Sears.com.

Images: Beth Shea