Adults at midlife and beyond are optimistic about their quality of life but a majority of them say satisfying sexual relationships are important to that quality, according to a survey by the American Association of Retired Persons.
But the AARP's Modern Maturity magazine says there's a "gender and age gap" bearing upon the sex lives of midlife and older adults.
The survey has been chided by, among others, critic Edmond Keenan Wynn, who says in the Wall Street Journal that even contemplating this kind of survey, never mind what it reveals, is a bid "to justify all the excesses of the 1960s, all the manic self-seeking and glistening egoism of the past 35 years."
According to the AARP/Modern Maturity survey, 67 percent of men polled and 57 percent of women say a satisfying sex relationship is important to their quality of life.
But the same survey says the "gender gap" shows eight of ten between 45 and 59 - 78 percent of women, 84 percent of men - have sexual partners, 58 percent of men and only 21 percent of women 75 or older have such partners. And sexual activity tends to have more importance for men than women polled, with 71 percent of men 45-59 and 48 percent of women in the same age group saying sexual activity is important to their lives.
Among those 75 and older, the survey says, 35 percent of men and 13 percent of women agreed - but the survey seems to imply that the partner gap's partial closure might make another similar polling show higher results in both cases.
And sexual activity among men and women declines, naturally enough, as their health declines and many lose their partners.
What about sexual activity outside of marriage? Among the 45-59 age group, the survey says, 28 percent of men and 36 percent of women say it should not happen, while more among both sexes said it in the 75-and-older set - 50 percent of men, 66 percent of women - share the taboo.
The survey says that, among those who have sexual partners, majorities of both men and women call their partners their best friends (75 percent and 72 percent, respectively) and "kind and gentle" (67 and 66 percent, respectively).
The men polled were a little more prone to describe their partners as physically attractive, exciting, and romantic than the women polled, but the percentages of those who saw their partners as romantic or physically attractive didn't decline with age - in fact, the survey says, it might increase.
But, the survey adds, only 29 percent of women 45-59 describe their partners as romantic, while in the 75-older set of women polled, 53 percent of them did.
But all of these numbers, critics such as Wynn argue, mean little or nothing in someone's actual personal life. "On the other hand," Wynn writes, "maybe that's the point. By reducing sex to a statistical sample, we declaw it, we make this innate and powerful experience into a mere activity."
Wynn says it's no accident that most clinical or quasi-clinical studies of sexual behaviour and attitudes use "healthful" and "satisfying" to describe what they're studying. "We are reducing sex," he says, "to an aerobic moment, a session on a horizontal Stairmaster."
And he doesn't exactly think the survey avoids tripping over itself, either. He says the partner gap may still be saying, after all, older men might still prefer younger women, and "that means youth still trumps age in the sex arena. Which makes a lot more sense than trying to make Grandma into a sex object."
