“Fifty Shades of Grey” Series Behind a Baby Boom?
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — It’s one of the hottest and best-selling book series of all time. The erotic trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed, by British author E. L. James has sold 20 million copies in the last four months alone.
The books’ contents — the relationship between protagonists Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele and their very explicitly detailed sadomasochistic sexual encounters — are said to have sparked a “mommy porn” revolution. The revolution has been whispered about among friends and spilled out online on discussion boards like those of the popular pregnancy and parenting website BabyCenter.com.
Now, the revolution is coming to the delivery room, where a baby boom sparked by the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon is predicted.
“Reading Fifty Shades of Grey is acting like an aphrodisiac for women,” Linda Murray, Global Editor in Chief of BabyCenter.com, told ABC’s Good Morning America. “It’s putting them in the mood more frequently and they’re having more sex and they’re ultimately getting pregnant faster.”
While the Fifty Shades baby boom theory will only be proven months from now, GMA spoke with a trio of couples to see if a book really could start a new population burst.
Carly and Leroy Gibson of Spokane, Wash., said 14 months spent trying to have another baby had taken the sexy out of sex.
“I think the fun was taken out of it at that point in time because you’re like, ‘Okay, here it is. Day 14. We’ve got five days to go. Go strong. I don’t care if you’re tired…it’s time to go to work,’” Carly said.
After Carly began reading Fifty Shades, Leroy says he noticed a change in his wife.
“She just put down the book and she was all over me,” he told GMA. “It was nice and enjoyable.”
For Scott and Danielle Olszewski of New York City, getting pregnant with a third child was proving difficult after they’d had their first two kids with relative ease.
“I’m blessed that I have two healthy kids but I wanted that one more and I was sad,” Danielle said. “Then Christian Grey entered my life.”
A third couple, Michelle and Michael Burdick of Brockton, Mass., suffered a miscarriage and various health problems that made it difficult to add to their family of four. Then, a girlfriend of Michelle’s recommended the Fifty Shades series.
“I started telling him [Michael] about it, bits and pieces, here and there,” Michelle said. “Then I started taking pictures of the book and sending them to him.”
“I opened up the email and I go, ‘Okay, umm, are you suggesting something?,’” Michael said of his response.
The results for all three couples?
The Gibsons are due on Feb. 15; Michelle and Michael are due Feb. 20; and Scott and Danielle Olszewski are due Feb. 1. February is nine months after the Fifty Shades trilogy saw its biggest spike in sales this past May.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio