This editorial series, S-E-X, is brought to you by the Fort Worth Moms Blog and Andrea Palmer, MD FACOG with Fenom Women’s Care. All 15 original articles from the S-E-X series can be found on our website.
Growing up, my family had a hardcore weekly tradition: Sunday nap time.
Of course, as small children, this was just the time we took our daily nap. But as my sisters and I got older, my parents continued to enforce a Sunday “nap” time that was virtually untouchable. Every Sunday, barring a holiday gathering or something really out of the ordinary, from around 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., my parents would essentially shut our family off from the outside world.
While my parents would go to their room to “nap” (more on this in a minute), my sisters and I would hang out, watching TV together and often falling asleep ourselves. We didn’t have cable, so even the watching TV part was chill as there were VERY few options of things to watch on Sunday afternoons. Outside of football season, we’d usually watch some kind of X Games, robotic wars, rodeo competition, or some movie from our family collection.
My parents would take our home phones off the hook so no one could call us, and later on when we got cell phones (I grew up in a cell phone-free world until I was like 16), they would often tell us to turn them off. To make sure no one interrupted nap time, my mom had a homemade sign that she laminated and would hang from a piece of yarn on a hook on our front door, nicely asking people to not knock and come back after 5:00 p.m., as we were having Sunday afternoon family rest time.
One of my sisters was a great athlete, and I remember my parents even being super strict about her being unable to play in tournaments on Sundays (not only because they didn’t want to compromise Sunday rest time, but also because they never wanted to miss church for sports). Of course, at times we kids found this afternoon tradition boring, but for the most part, because we grew up with this rest time, we accepted it from early on, and I think we often even embraced the nothingness.
BUT what we didn’t know until we were grown was what Sunday “nap” time was really about. Now, as a parent, I get it. As our kids get older, have later bed times, and don’t take naps, we’re faced with the tough question: When do parents find time to have regular sex?
Enter, Sunday nap time.
Every week, my parents had three hours in their room, alone, in the middle of the day to enjoy “extracurricular marital activities,” to cuddle in their bed, watch TV together, and actually take a nap (which I now understand how badly parents need).
We were strictly warned to never knock on my parents’ door or try to ask them anything unless it was a life-and-death emergency. To keep sounds from transferring, they would turn on a loud box fan in the hallway between our bedrooms during nap time. So in the end, Sunday nap time worked out beautifully for us all.
My parents got their alone time together and we kids got a break from the outside world (excluding our four TV channels that showed nothing really mesmerizing at that time), spent time together as siblings, and got some rest before starting another week.
I think setting aside untouchable rest time on Sunday afternoons nowadays will be a bit more complicated. We’ll have to take up all kinds of electronic devices and probably figure out a way to turn off some TV options or maybe just say that Sunday afternoons are a time for a TV break all together.
But maybe in a culture where most families are so busy, and in a time when we all have so many options to be connected with the outside world, we need Sunday nap time more than ever.
Not to mention, let’s be honest, parents need sex more than anyone . . . .
