"What about it?"

"Nothing."

I waited.

"I mean," he went on, "how are you supposed to go from seeing that to wanting to be with ?" He stopped, but his eyes kept asking the question.

"Right," I said. "It gets easier with time, for just about everyone."

Although no one seems to talk publicly about the problem, Josh is only one of dozens of men who have confided to me that witnessing the births of their children has made it difficult for them to be attracted to their wives, at least in the short run.

They seem to have trouble seeing them as sexual beings after seeing them make babies, trouble reverting to a mind-set in which their wives' sexual anatomy is just that -- not associated with images of new life emerging through the birth canal.

In the age of the "new man," very little consideration is given to the potentially negative side effects of togetherness in the delivery room. Every man I have spoken with over the past few years knows he is expected to be with his wife when his child comes into the world.

How can anyone explain sitting out such a life-changing moment in the waiting room?

The trouble is that the moment turns out to be both intensely beautiful and potentially traumatic.

It is miraculous to see a baby's head emerge, and it can also be shocking. It is riveting to see an umbilical cord connecting mother and baby, but it can also be very disturbing. It is exciting to be asked by a doctor to cut that umbilical cord, but also potentially very frightening, even for otherwise rather fearless men.

And not every man gets over it. Several men have confessed to me that they never regained the same romantic view of their wives that they had before seeing them deliver children.