date --date : the perl way


I need to get the past 5(x) months for certaing calculations. What I have is listed below:

########################################
my $year, $month_str, $month_int;


foreach my $count (1..5) {
                $year = `date --date '$count months ago' +"%Y"`;
                chop($year);
                $month_str =`date --date '$count months ago' +"%b"`;
                chop($month_str);
                $month_int =`date --date '$count months ago' +"%m"`;
                chop($month_int);
                print "\n $year:$month_str:$month_int";

}
########################################

This works as expected, the problem is I am using a shell command and I would like to move away from it. Is the perl module that is able to take
parameters juat like the 'date' command?
.