The Perils and Pleasures of Aging: How Women’s Sexualities Change across the Life Course

ABSTRACT

Prior literature on aging and sexuality primarily portrays narratives of sexual decline, often leading to a pathologization of older adult sexuality. Further attention needs to be paid to the positive consequences of aging on people’s romantic and sex lives. Using life story interview data with 39 single women ages 35–91, I examine how women’s romantic and sex lives change over time. The major barriers that middle-aged and older adult women report are a small dating pool and caregiving responsibilities, but women also highlight improvements in their sex lives as they age. Notably, women report an increase in comfort with sex, sexual assertiveness, and sexual satisfaction. The findings further highlight the need for aging, gender, and sexuality scholars to supplement their discussions of aging as a problem with investigations of the advantages of the aging process.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging
• gender
• life course
• sexualities
• women’s sexualities

Acknowledgments

Special thanks go to Brian Powell and Eliza Pavalko for their helpful feedback on various drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Bernice Pescosolido, Donna Eder, Youngjoo Cha, Justin Garcia, Long Doan, and Nichole Peña --all of whom offered valuable feedback on this article at various stages of the research process. This research was presented at Indiana University's Social Psychology, Health, and the Life Course workshop; I appreciate the valuable comments and suggestions offered by individuals in attendance at the workshop. Lastly, I would like to thank my research participants; this project would not have been possible without them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I borrow the following terms from developmental psychology (Arnett 2000; Baltes 1987; Erikson 1980): emerging adult, young adult, middle-aged persons, and older adult persons. These terms are used to reference the idea that people assume different roles and responsibilities in varying developmental periods (Arnett 2000; Clausen 1986).

2. In general, I had to recruit women over the age of 55 differently from younger women. Because older persons are less likely to use the internet (Zickuhr and Madden 2012), few women over the age of 55 saw my study advertised online. Rather, participants were generally recruited when I attended and visited local aging advocacy group meetings, local senior centers, and 55+ singles’ groups. Older women recruited this way also vouched for me to their friends and family members, helping me recruit other women to participate.

3. There are alternative ways to group the participants on the basis of age and/or cohort. For example, women could be grouped together if they belonged to generation X (35–49), the baby boomer generation (50–68), or the silent generation (69+). However, I chose to group the women by age rather than cohort because the data reveal more pronounced age than cohort differences. For example, there are far more similarities than differences in the experiences of generation Xers and baby boomers in the sample.

4. This method is particularly ideal for understanding how views and experiences with dating and sex change over time because most large-scale sexuality surveys are cross-sectional, rather than longitudinal. The General Social Survey, however, has been used to understand how sexual attitudes and behaviors change over time, although it has a limited number of measures of sex available (see Loftus 2001; Treas 2002; Twenge, Sherman, and Wells 2015).

5. Achieving trust and rapport was an ongoing part of data collection that began prior to recruitment and continued into the interview. For example, I attended local aging advocacy and singles’ groups meetings to become a familiar face in the local community. Thus, some participants had already had two or three encounters with me by the time they were invited to participate in the study.

6. Supplementary analyses were conducted to compare the present sample with the Current Population Survey (CPS). For the two samples, I compared the demographic characteristics of unpartnered women ages 35 and over residing in the Midwest. Although there are similarities between the two samples, the present sample is less racially diverse, more highly educated, and less religious than unmarried women in the Midwest.

7. Although two parents noted becoming sexually assertive with age, their stories were not typical of the mothers who participated in the study.

8. Analyses also reveal that menopause is a barrier to some women’s sex lives, namely because vaginal lubrication problems and pain experienced during sex limit the frequency of sexual intercourse.

9. Nevertheless, I paid careful attention to recall biases that arose, making note of inconsistencies in women’s stories and moments during the interview when women reported problems accurately recalling events. When these inconsistences were observed, I omitted these details from reported data in order to increase the validity of the findings.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa R. Miller

Lisa R. Miller is an assistant professor of sociology at Eckerd College. She specializes in the study of gender, sexualities, families, and the life course. Her current research investigates sexualities across the life course. She has previously published research on the nature and consequences of prejudice and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals.