Daily-Level Risk and Protective Factors for Sexual Desire Among Women with Children

Sexual desire (or libido) is defined as one's experience with physical sexual urges and psychological thoughts or fantasies to engage in sexual activity with a partner (Mark, 2014). Women's sexual desire positively impacts sexual satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, feelings of love, and intimacy among romantic partners (see Breznyak & Whisman, 2004; Mark, 2014; 2012; Sprecher, 2002). However, this shifts when a woman becomes a mother. The specific role of mother has been reported to negatively impact women's sexual desire in qualitative reports (Sims & Meana, 2010). In addition, pregnancy and birth impact women's sexual desire more than other aspects of sexual functioning (Botros Abramov, Miller, Sand, Gandhi, Nickolov, Goldbert, 2006) and mothers have significantly lower levels of relationship satisfaction in comparison to fathers and married women without children (Shapiro, Gottman, & Carrere, 2000). Therefore, the proposed study aims to investigate how women's sexual desire is impacted by motherhood and possible risk or protective factors among women and their romantic partners.