More Senior Sex Surveys

Another senior sex survey, this time in the British Journal of Medicine, has found that grandma and grampa are still doing it. Wow! Or is that "no duh"?


It isn't really a flash from Dr. Freud that people tend to do things that feel good.


Still, it is good to get some validation on this topic from sources that the more staid among us might believe. Maybe this will help when doctors get out the prescription pad for them to consider the effects on libido of the various choices for adults of all ages. Also, perhaps some prudish offspring will take it as a clue to stick to their own business on this and other topics relating to aging.

Talking to Doctors About Senior Sex

In the study of sex in people over 57 years old that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine last August, one of the findings was that only 38% of people in the sample had ever talked with a doctor about sex. (When I mentioned that to a doctor, he replied that his guess, at least here in Massachusetts, would have been half that.)

Which is kind of funny, because as we get older the "machinery" changes. We can't just take things for granted anymore and sometimes the convergence of blood flow, lubrication, and psychological excitement just doesn't all come together at the right time. But there is help with many if not most of these kinds of things and there is more knowledge and more possible intervention all the time.

Not only that, erectile dysfunction can be an early warning of impending heart and circulation problems, even earlier than more traditional measures.

There are lots of good reasons to let the doctor know what you are experiencing, wondering, fearing as you get older.

Also, many drugs have loss of libido as a side effect. Don't let the doctor assume that because you are older, you don't care about sex anymore and it won't matter how your sex life is affected, just get the blood pressure down or whatever. And that includes solo sex too.

Look, if some young physician is shocked that people want and enjoy sex throughout their lives it's time someone break it to them. You'll be doing them a favor.

Senior Sex Surveys what do people say to survey takers?

We know a bit about what people tell and don't tell when it comes to research surveys. None of it is too earth shaking. None of it should make us believe that we are seeing the behavior of a group of self-reporting individuals in more than broad brushstrokes. And that's OK. Just don't start telling me "what old folks do behind closed doors," because beyond those broad brushstrokes we probably still don't know.

Lots of things figure in, but however you do it the result of putting together a large number of interviews on a subject as personal as sexual behavior, running the data through a computer, and then stating the results as if they now represent scientific knowledge is very likely to be misleading.

The age, gender, race, and perceived status of the interviewer can play a big role. For example, it has been shown that white people report less prejudice toward black people if the interviewer is black than if the interviewer is white and that black people do the same thing in the opposite direction.

It would seem especially likely that a 60 or 70 year old person who was being interviewed by a younger person or a person of the opposite sex might not be completely honest in their answers about very personal topics, but it is not an easy topic for most of us with anyone.

Which might start to explain why the numbers in a study might appear, for example, as though the males were having more intimate relationships and more sexual contact than the females even if you try to factor in that women live longer so have have fewer choices of partner. As one sociologist has pointed out, since we know that males tend to exaggerate their sexual experiences at younger ages, why would we expect that they would stop doing that as they got older?

Maybe perceived interviewer bias is involved again in how few older gays and lesbian were found and how few people said they masturbate, or maybe not. Maybe the self-reports were 100 percent accurate. We just don't know for sure.

I sure don't know. It is reassuring to know that lots of people over the age of 57 did report that they are doing lots of things with their sexuality and that they feel pretty good about it, thank you. And, that good health is correlated with good sex as we get older.

Beyond that, I will just have to wait until I am as amazed at what they have counted, timed, measured and taken movies of in the field of senior or elderly or mature sex as I was at the Masters and Johnson studies. (That didn't come out more than 5 years after I had sat in an Anthropology class and had a professor state with confidence that there were just some things we'd never really know about because you can't wire people up, set up your cameras, and tell them to go ahead and make love while you sit over here and take notes.)

Surprise me with unbiased observations and measurements, but don't get too carried away with the self-reports.