Pop culture, particularly films, has conditioned us to think that having kids is a lot like watching the entirety of any debate in the 2016 election: exhausting and libido-killing. For whatever reason, entertainment plays up the negative effects of parenthood, specifically, strains on a romantic relationship. How many movies have you seen when drained parents finally put their kids to bed, only for one to initiate sex and the other to roll over, drooling, immediately in their 10th dream? Need I remind you of Miranda’s “Let’s just get it over with” in Sex and the City? Sex is straight-up repulsive for working parents in movies, leaving us millennials like…
Great. However, real-life parents Viggo Mortensen and Kathryn Hahn seem to swear this is a bad movie cliche. Chin up, guys.
These parents are hard at work on set and in the sheets.
When I asked Viggo, who has a son, Henry, if having kids means less sex, he gave me a hard “No way.” Confident. I like that. Kathryn, who has a daughter and son, both under 10, does admit that sex drive goes in waves once the little ones come into the picture. How could it not? “There’s a moment, as a woman, after a baby is born, where you just do not want anything else touching you,” she says. I can only imagine.
No matter how excruciatingly TMI things may get between parents, hopefully that fire is still there. Somewhere. “Eventually, of course, we’re human beings and that’s still in there,” she says. So next time you see one of these two, and they’re all like:
You’ll know why.
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