“Post-terror trauma is boosting Americans’ sex drive, sending singles in search of partners and bringing new passion to marital bedrooms, according to psychologists, who say sex is a primal tool to battle fear.”
So is this true? Why would trauma increase a person’s sex drive?? Is there some evolutionary reason for this???
And is the birthrate really going to jump next month?
I think it’s a desire to achieve intimacy with those we love more than a direct physiological reaction to terrorism. I know that on 9/11 I wanted nothing more than to just sit on the couch with my husband and hold him. I imagine there has already been a sort of baby boom, probably last week, since that was nine months to the day and all.
I had this very debate with my (now-ex) S.O. on 9/11: whether there was more or less nookie taking place that night than there would have otherwise been. (In our case, less, because I had just donated blood and was feeling pretty lousy.)
We decided that some people would be too freaked out and would just want to cuddle, but some would want more, either for life-affirming reasons, to express love, or just as stress relief. I have a hunch that it all balanced out.
I think there might be an evolutionary component to this as well. I was talking with a Psychiatrist who did a lot of work in the inner-city with young female teens and sexual issues. When discussing the high birth rates of inner city teens compared to their wealthier counterparts the good doctor mentioned that you see birth rates rise in countries at war or otherwise under assault in some fashion (i.e. famine). Hand-in-hand with this is a general drop in the average age of women getting pregnant. The inner-city could be likened, in her view, to a war zone thus she considers this at least part of the explanation for higher rates of teen pregnancy there (she will freely admit there are a lot of issues going in there and this isn’t the only explanation).
From an evolutionary standpoint this makes sense. The species seems under threat so pumping out more babies increases the likelihood that at least some will survive to perpetuate the species (not to mention that those who survive will be stronger or better adapted to survive). The pulling together of husbands/wives, boyfriends/girlfriends and so on may be seen as a ‘symptom’ of this underlying drive.
If you think that’s crazy and that humans are far beyond such animal motivations think again. You’re more animal than you probably like to think and are still swayed by basic drive mechanisms that have been around for ages. That said we are more complex as well so I think this could only be seen as just a part of the whole explanation.
This thread once again proves that I am nothing if not un-ordinary (I didn’t want to say extraordinary). I can say unequivocally that the OP is certainly not true in my case.
To correlate with what Whack-A-Mole said, there’s a stitistic (I don’t know where from or if still true) that said the Palestinians had the highest birthrate in the world.
Isn’t it a common urban legend that Americans copulate more during catastrophes? Apparently a lot of hospital personnel will swear up and down that there are baby booms nine months after a disaster of some kind, but I’ve read that the statistics just don’t bear them out.
Snopes has an article that says that it is a myth that the 1965 New York blackout resulted in an increase in reproductive activity
That may well be true but what I’m talking about is different on a deeper level than what you are talking about. Any given catastrophe comes and goes relatively quickly. The hurricane may blast your for a few days and after that it’s time to clean up. In the distant past a cheetah may have chased a proto-human into a tree where the proto-human got away with nothing more than a good scare and a workout. These sorts of stresses come and go too quickly to have a deeper impact.
While 9/11 was a catastrophe and lasted a short time in and of itself the attack lent a lasting fear to our country. Beyond fearing for our own lives as if a cheetah just chased us we fear for our children, families, friends and fellow citizens. We wonder when the terrorists might get around to something even more devastating such as nukes or biological weapons. So, this fear is long lasting and makes us concerned for the welfare of not just ourselves but our ‘species’ (in this case Americans). This would be akin to a famine or a drought or a plague or an extended war that starts impacting a whole population. In these instances the drive to reproduce I mentioned tends to get ratcheted up a few notches.
I’d have to see some hard numbers here, because, speaking entirely anecdotally, it seems to me that relatively very few Americans have experienced major changes in the practical and physical circumstances of their lives since Sept. 11.
A certain number of people were directly affected by the attack and a certain number of people have been sent off to war, but other than an initial shock and some continuing low-level anxiety, it seems to me that on the whole our lives have changed very little, certainly nothing like the extreme survival stress caused by something like a famine, drought, or plague.
Here in Washington, anyway, which was one of the sites of the attacks, I certainly don’t perceive a fundamental long-term change in the way people behave or interact with each other. All the people I know who are having children are in the type of circumstances (married, in their late 20s or 30s) that one would expect them to have children, and most of those conceptions occurred long before Sept. 11.
I should note that I do not support or deny the premise in the OP. I haven’t seen numbers myself. I was merely trying to offer a possible expanation, if true, as to why 9/11 might cause this phenomenon (if it is one at all).
Thinking on this some more you can see a bot of what the OP is talking about reflected right here in this thread.
This was undoubtedly not an unusual occurrence. Now consider getting two people holding each other and human nature being what it is and it is not unreasonable to suppose a few more conceptions occurred that day than is statistically normal.
Certainly nothing that has happened to the USA to this point rises to the wholesale destruction that a famine or plague might cause. I think you hit on it with ‘low-level anxiety’. I doubt the numbers will show any extreme baby bubble here but there might be a slight rise as this low-level anxiety percolates beneath the surface. Would such a bubble even appear on statistical radars? I have no idea. This is all anecdotal evidence and conjecture so I can’t say one way or the other.
All of that said my wife and I have had the opposite reaction to the premise I have been putting forth. We’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a family but post 9/11 we are more afraid to give it a go. Shortly after 9/11 I was seriously worried about what would happen to my pets should an N/B/C attack occur in Chicago (it really upset me in a big way to think I might have to leave them behind if I was being rushed out of the city). If I had a child at home I’d go flat out bonkers in that situation. My wife and I still intend to start a family but I do believe the 9/11 attack delayed the beginning of that time at least a little bit.
acsenray, I have to disagree (just me personally) with your ascertation that we’re all over it and going on with normal life bar a little general ooginess (that’s a paraphrase of course)
I had to fly twice this weekend and had to be SEDATED to get on the plane. I’m scared to go to baseball stadiums. I’m scared to have other people travel. And while, yes, I do suffer from Anxiety Disorder, I doubt I’m the only one who is frightened by this new world wherein our very lives are threatened almost daily be vague, unpreventable threats.
I don’t deny your own personal experience, Jarbabyj, but I just don’t see people around me curtailing their activities post-Sept. 11 because of a fear of further attacks. Some people were inconvenienced because of the temporary disruption to air travel. Some people are suffering because of the downturn in the economy (which really started in late 2000, long before Sept. 11), but I don’t know anyone who had decided to forgo any activity based simply on fear. I guess this goes to show how useless anecdotal evidence (both yours and mine) is in drawing broad conclusions.
