By Jonatas Dornelles
Anthropologyst
Not so long ago very little was known about the implications of sexual activity during pregnancy. A great many couples simply abolished it in fear of placing the baby’s life and the pregnant herself at risk.
Less conservative stances towards this issue would start to arise only afterwards scientific investigation enabled the devise of new theories about it.
The widespread dissociation between sex and maternity is due in part to the perpetuation of a puritan social compass. Within it sex gets ultimately justified as key factor in procreation. Under this point of view, any given sexual relation that’s only pleasure meant, without any objective of furthering the species, is barely tolerated.
Therefore, during pregnancy and post childbirth, the woman undergoes a curious process of sexuality denial in certain societies. In which point she might be considered sanctified somehow, a sort of spiritual being that would not degrade itself and indulge into the sexual tendencies of its personality.
Such conception of angelical purity is deeply connected to the misconceived idea- mainstay in the traditionalist societies- that the mother is a nonsexual being.
What’s more, suppressed any manifestation in her behavior from sexual nature is underlying within these lines, since it’d impart some profound blasphemy.
How the woman senses the alterations in her metabolic rate is intrinsic to the rebounds in sexuality. And also, with the husband’s frame of mind towards her bodily changes and how she’d perceive herself in terms of pregnancy.
Generally, all sorts of reactions can be pinpointed out of the labor preparatory groups. The bliss in being fecundated and coming out as a woman often comes along with the pride feeling from being pregnant, mostly when this new aspect of the female aesthetic is shared by the husband.
Otherwise, the opposite means true and the alterations in her body frame are viewed as deformations, the woman feels ugly, a monster and sexually unable to attract someone. When this feeling takes over not even the reassuring stance of the husband would be acceptable and the woman senses there might be the underlying intent of cheering her up.
In cases as such, there is always sexual detachment, which is bound to bring jealousy and the suspicion of infidelity upon the relationship. In fact, when the husband tends, in his understanding, to place maternity apart from sexuality, the extramarital affairs that he’d keep during his wife’s pregnancy aren’t rare.
Nowadays is supported that there can be sex during the woman’s pregnancy. She, in taking her needs into account, would suit herself. Apart from being allowed, sex during pregnancy gets endorsed, since it makes the woman feel accepted, sexually proactive and feminine.
This stance plays upon the insecurity streaks likely to strike her. Pregnancy is only a phase in life. In one hand, the woman may not be the same, once she’d become a mother from the childbirth onwards. On the other hand, she’s still a woman, with her wishes and fancies.