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OCR for page 500
Sexuality Across the Life Course in the
United States
John H. Gagnon
In all societies one of the major axes on which sexual life is ordered
is the age of individuals as organized into a socially constructed life
course (CIausen, 1972; Reigel and Meachum, 1976~. However, the
timing in the life course in which various forms of sexual conduct will
be learned, expressed, and disappear, and the relationship of sexual
conduct to other aspects of social and psychological life vary from one
society to another and from one period to another in the history of
any specific society (Ford and Beach, 1951; Marshall and Suggs, 1971;
Dover, 1978; Katz, 1983; Hermit, 1984; Duberman, 1986; D'Emilio
ant! Fieeciman, 1988~. Thus not only does the patterning of sexuality
even across such a relatively narrow life stage as adolescence differ in
an advanced industrial society with a predominantly Jucleo-Christian
religious tradition like the United States and in developing societies
with differing religious traditions, but also important cliiTerences can
be found in the sexual lives of adolescents in the United States
and those in other Western inclustrial societies (Jones et al., 1986~.
Similarly, differences in the sexual life of adolescents can be found
across relatively short time spans in the history of the United States;
one need only contrast the 1920s with the 1950s or either of these
decades with the 1980s.
As a result of this grounding in social and cultural processes,
chronological age and the biological events associated with it rarely
John H. Gagnon is in the Department of Sociology, State University of New York at
Stony Brook.
500
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SEXUALITY ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE ~ 501
.
directly explain sexual conduct. For example, the biological changes
associated with puberty interact with the social and cultural con-
texts that provide the framework for interpreting one's changing
bodily characteristics and reproductive capacities (Gagnon and Si-
mon, 1973~. In the same fashion, the social and cultural expectations
about the appropriate levels of sexual activity for the elderly often
shape the sexual declines associated with aging (Verwoercit et al.,
1969; Brecher et al., 1984)
Understanding that variations in sexual conduct are stratified by
culturally defined life stage groupings floes not entail the acceptance
of culturally universal sequences of human psychosocial development
(Baltes and Brim, 1979~. The staging of the life course in any
culture, and the sexual activities that are linked to it, depend on
social constructions within cultures rather than on the automatic
biological unfolding of the organism (Nardi, 1973; Neugartan and
Datan, 1973; Uhlenberg, 1978~. Thus, in the United States, although
the scripts for sexual conduct (the who, what, when, where, and why
of conduct) and the interpersonal sexual networks through which
they are expressed change across life course stages, both the sexual
scripts and the networks can be matched only partially with age/stage
periods in the life course (Gagnon, 1973; Simon ant! Gagnon, 1987~.
The matching of life events to age/stage periods is most precise
in strongly age-graded traditional societies with a relatively lim-
ited set of irreversible role transitions across the life course (Kagan,
1980~. In industrial and postindustrial societies, such matchings
of life events to age/stage periods seem most satisfactory early in
life, which accounts for much of the success of age/stage variables
in human development theory and research related to infancy and
childhood. However, there is cross-cultural and historical evidence
that even these early moments of the life course are not immune to
change (for an instructive example, see Kett, 1978~.
The complexity of life course stages has increaser! in the more
advanced industrial societies. Both increases in discontinuities early
in the life course (as a function of participation of sharply age-
graclec! family and schooling practices) ant! a greater diffuseness of
stage boundaries later in life (e.g., when relatively age-indepenclent
patterns of affectional and sexual coupling and recoupling) can be
observed. With increases in societal complexity and social mobil-
ity, individuals turn out less often to be exactly what they might
have been expected to be, given their life chances at birth (Brim and
Wheeler, 1966~. In contrast to more traditional societies with limited
adult role sets, limited rates of individual mobility, and slow rates
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502 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
of sociocultural change, rapidly changing advanced industrial soci-
eties are characterized by individuals with wider role networks and
less predictable life courses. In such cultures, personality structures
themselves might be expected to be more fluid.
These differences in societies make it important to examine those
social strata and experiences that crosscut age/stage periods and in-
crease the variability of conduct within age and stage groupings.
Some of these stratification systems begin early in life to allocate
inclividuals into relatively fixed streams of individual development,
isolating them from conventional life courses. For instance, some
birth defects, when responded to by the society, often create specially
segregated clusters of differentially ablest individuals with quite dif-
ferent age/stage patterns. Other strata rest on characteristics such
as race, religion, or the socioeconomic status of parents; sometimes
this status is relatively easy to change, other times, it is not, depend-
ing on the social context (Featherman, 1980~. Other stratifications
that differentiate age groups appear later in life. College attendance
by some young persons and going to work after high school by oth-
ers often affirm prior, but less stringent, boundaries between young
persons of different social classes in high school. Going to college or
going to work creates new social ant] sexual networks that exclude
former potential sexual partners and open slots for new ones.
One important division in the society that is particularly relevant
to sexuality and crosscuts all other strata, including age, is gender
(Ross), 1985~. The gendering of social life has seemed so natural
that it appeared to most to be part of the biological background.
It is only through the efforts of feminist scholars, both women and
men, to denaturalize the gender order and point out its social ori-
gins, that one has been able to observe the importance of gender
in structuring the conceptions of sexuality. Over the last 15 years
there have been important changes in research and theorizing about
gender and sexuality in most social science disciplines. In general,
these reconsiderations have followed in a social constructionist tra-
dition (Ortner ant! Whitehead, 1981; Tiefer, 1987), but important
contributions have been made by those who have focused on what
they consider to be "essential" differences between the genders and
their sexuality (Rich, 1983~.
Although much of this work has been theoretical or critical,
important original empirical work has been published, particularly
in social history. While it is not possible to review here in detail this
extensive and theoretically rich literature, a number of points need!
to be made in light of it (some important recent works are by Rubin,
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SEXUALITY ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE ~ 503
1975, 1984; English et al., 1981; Snitow et al., 1984; Vance, 1984; and
CaTifia, whose works are cited in Rubin, 1984~. Such work points out
the necessary considerations that must be given to gender differences
in sexuality as they are "found" to exist across the life course. In
some cases these differences will be illusory; in others they will be
real, but culturally transient; in still others they will be functions of
the interests, both scientific- ant! otherwise, of the observers. Such
cautions should be kept in mind when considering the life course
constructed below.
Linked to the issue of gender is the problem of violence ant! its
sequelae in the lives of women. Some of this violence involves sexual
acts, but large amounts of violence against women may not be specif-
ically sexual and still be consequential for their sexual lives. Making
too sharp a distinction between sexual and nonsexual violence may
conceal rather than illuminate both the origins and the consequences
of gander-related violence(Strauset al., 1980;FinkeThoretal., 1983~.
While some men are the victims of specifically sexual violence (perpe-
trated almost exclusively by other men), this is not a routine aspect
of men's lives. Relatively unexamined, however, is the nonsexual vi-
olence between men (including games involving physical aggression),
which is often traceable to the direct or indirect competition among
men for the attention of, or access to, women. However, women of
all ages, but more often the young, are relatively frequent targets
of sexual coercion and violence (Groth, 1979; Russell, 1984~. From
being forced by lovers and spouses to perform sexual acts they do not
wish to perform to acts of sexual violence by strangers, the specter
or the experience of violence related to sexuality is part of the back-
ground of female sexuality. The climate of potential violence (heavily
reinforcer! by, and represented in, the mass media), as well as the
experience of actual violence by women, must have effects on their
sexual lives. How to factor this climate and these individual events
into a life course perspective on the sexual relations between women
and men is not entirely obvious, but such experiences, on average,
may be as important as other major life events (e.g., divorce) or life
conditions (e.g., Tow income) in structuring women's sexuality.
The most important stratification of individuals on specifically
sexual grounds is the result of an erotic preference for persons of ei-
t her the other or the same gender. This cleavage begins to be sharply
felt by many in adolescence but often only becomes fully articulated
in young adulthood. The social cleavage between those who prefer
sex with the same gender and those who prefer sex with persons of the
other gender is extremely complex and has undergone considerable
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504 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
historical change since the end of World War II (D'Emilio, 1983~.
It should be noted that many persons having ongoing sexual experi-
ences with persons of the same gender do not think of themselves as
gay, lesbian, or homosexual. Some of these persons have such sexual
relations out of a variety of motives and in a variety of contexts,
some of them subcultural. Thus, young men who have regular sex
with women may intermittently sell themselves (usually their penis)
to persons of the same gender for sex, never thinking of themselves as
homosexual (Reiss, 1961~. Delinquents, young men in the military,
young men down on their luck-, and working-cIass men in need of
sexual outlet in absence of women may engage in such "homosexual"
activity. Some men from some Latin cultures and some aggressive
men in prisons do not discriminate between the gender of their sexual
partners as long as they are in the active/insertive sexual role (Car-
rier, 1976~. Such persons, and others that could be identified, are
often described as bisexual, but this is much too simple, except as a
purely behavioral identifier (Schwartz and Blumstein, 1977~. There
are men who identify themselves as gay who have sex with women
and women in lesbian relationships who may have sex with men on
an intermittent basis (Gagnon, 1977; CaTifia, 1983~.
Most people who have sex with partners of the same gender
solely on a situational or contextual basis have only a limited portion
of their social relationships with those having same-gender erotic
preferences and often have most of their sexual activity with persons
of the other gender. Prior to the early 1970s, this pattern of living
a life hidden among the heterosexual majority was probably true of
large numbers of persons who would have identified themselves as
homosexual or at least predominantly interested in sex with persons
of the same gender. Life entirely in the closet or at least concealing
their predominant sexual preference to important persons in their
lives (parents, spouses, children, other relatives, coworkers, good
friends, members of the religious community) was the common con-
dition of persons with same-gender sexual desires (Humphrey, 1978~.
Homosexuality was thought to be sinful, criminal, pathological, or
deviant, and research was usually conducted by scientists holding
these presumptions on persons living under these conditions of social
repression (Bieber, 1962, Socarides, 1978~. Many individuals partic-
ipated clandestinely and fearfully in the limited institutions of the
"homosexual community," whereas others lived in sexual relation-
ships open to limited friendship circles ant! social groups (Warren,
1974~. Fear of blackmail, robbery, police harassment or brutality,
loss of jobs, and discovery by unknowing loved ones was endemic
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SEXUALITY ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE ~ 505
(Kinsey et al., 1948; Gebhar<1 et al., 1965; Simon and Gagnon, 1967;
Weinberg and Williams, 1974~.
The social transformations of the 1960s and 1970s created from
the earlier homosexual community a new social collectivity that has
come to be callecl the gay mate and lesbian communities in which new
sexual identities have been created (Plummer, 1981; Escoffier, 1985~.
Part of this social solidarity was the emergence of a more complex
community in metropolitan centers based on a wide variety of needs
and interests (Humphreys, 1972; D'Emilio, 1983~. Gay and lesbian
political groups, newspapers and book publishers, community service
agencies, restaurants, employment and other agencies,- and medical
and legal professionals have flourished in these communities. As a
tradition of greater openness emerged, it was possible for some gay
men and lesbians to be "open" to all the important persons in their
lives as well as to the general public, whereas others remained either
selective or constrained in their openness. Despite these changes,
however, there floes not seem to have been a reduction in homophobia
among the general population, at least as measured by attitude
questions about homosexuality on national surveys (see Figure 7-2
in Chapter 7~.
The relation of the gay male and lesbian communities to the
larger society has come to Took more like that of other minority com-
munities based on ethnicity, religion, and race, which prized both
their cultural singularity and their relation to the larger culture,
polity, and economy (Paul et al., 1982; D'Emilio, 1983~. Some gay
men and lesbians live their entire lives within their own communities,
spending the majority of their lives working ant! living with persons
having the same sexual preference. Others work and live partially
in the social world populated by a majority of heterosexuals, some-
times open, and sometimes not, but have most of their important
affectional ties and interpersonal connections in the gay and lesbian
communities. Still others retain strong ties to members of the hetero-
sexual majority (including parents and children)—sometimes open
about their sexual preference and sometimes not—and sustain con-
nections of the widest variety with members of the larger society.
Although an imperfect analogy, one might think of the relations of
Jews to the non-Jewish majority in the United States at an ear-
lier stage in history a relationship that ranged (and still ranges,
though with less anti-Semitism) from the insularity of the Hasidic
communities to the invisibility of secular Jews in the larger society.
Given these restrictions on the universality of life course models
or even the lack of a dominant model in the United States, it is still
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506 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
useful to attempt to characterize the sexual life course in the United
States in order to identify modal sexual processes and experiences
as well as those that vary substantially from them. It is important
to point out that the presentation of the age/stage periods in a
time order from early to late does not mean that earlier experience is
always strongly determinative of later experience (Brim and Wheeler,
1966~. The demands of current social circumstances are often more
determinative of current sexual conduct than are early experiences
that are post hoc thought to connect earlier to later behavior. Sexual
conduct at later moments in the life course should not be thought of
as a simple reenactment of, or as preformed by, earlier patterns of
nonsexual or sexual conduct (Gagnon and Simon, 1973~.
What follows then is a heuristic framework for the life course
of those with other-gender and same-gender preferences in erotic re-
lations in the United States for the last two decades and perhaps
extending into the future until the turn of the century. There are
many variations from this framework. It is not meant to be prescrip-
tive or normative, although it may be treated by some as such, but
rather descriptive and indicative of sexual patterns in one culture
and at one point in time. In addition it should be emphasized that
both the life course and the patterns of sexual conduct are changing
in relatively unpredictable directions as a result of the influence of
much larger social forces.
CHILDHOOD
Infancy
Infancy stretches in time from birth to the middle of the third year
of life when independent locomotion and language skills have been
developed. The center of the child's life moves from the mother (and
less often a father or other caretaker) to a more extended group
of individuals in and out of the family. Although, historically, the
psychoanalytic tradition viewed these years as critical for mature psy-
chosexual development, more contemporary research suggests that
the importance of these early experiences (e.g., weaning, toilet train-
ing, parental attachment) to adolescent and adult sexual patterns is
quite limited. This is in accordance with other work in human devel-
opment which suggests that early experience may be less critical for
later development than previously assumed, although this remains a
serious point of controversy among developmental psychologists (Ka-
gan, 1971~. Perhaps of most importance in the United States is the
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SEXUALITY ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE ~ 507
successful acquisition of some elements of a conventionalized gender
identity, and perhaps the most important of these is the preliminary
sense of being a boy or a girl. Although it has been argued that
this acquisition of gender identity is an all or none process some-
what like imprinting, a more cautious formulation would be that the
components of the conventional gender identity package are proba-
bly learned in a more cumulative fashion over the entire period of
childhood (Luria, 1979~.
The intensity and consistency of environmental demands for con-
forming gender conduct among the- young may make the acquisition
of gender identity appear to be a form of natural development, but
there is evidence that various elements of gender identity seem to be
accessible to change later in life (Maccoby ant! Jacklin, 1974~. Thus
gender-linked differences in the behavior of small children, such as
assertiveness, often wash out in the context of the demands of adult
work lives (Epstein, 1981~. In most Western societies and partic-
ularly in the United States, this earliest portion of the life course
is linked to sexuality as expressed by most postpubertal individuals
primarily through cumulative gender role and nonsexual learning,
which serve as a frame for the future acquisition and practice of both
heterosexual and homosexual conduct in adolescence (Money and
Ehrhardt, 1972; Kessler and McKenna, 1974; Gagnon, 1979~.
Preschool
In the preschool period, say from ages 3 to 6, children enter an
expanding world of interpersonal and media experiences. Moth-
ers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, same-age peers, the mass media
through television, and preschool and day-care experiences rapidly
complicate and enrich the world of children. Here, the differences
among various cultures and points in the history of any given culture
become more sharply focused. The presence or absence of the mass
merlin, churchgoing, full-time care by mothers, and urban or village
living shape not only the daily life of the child but also the ways
in which knowledge about sexuality is acquired and the systems of
meaning to which it is linked. (The historical study of sexual life is
rapidly expanding; for examples, see Foucault, 1978; Boswell, 1980;
Weeks, 1981; Gay, 1984; and Crompton, 1985.) Few children in the
world are as bombarded with gentler role models linked to the con-
sumption of toys and other products, or to explicit models of personal
attractiveness that become the basis of sexual attractiveness later in
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508 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
life, as are chiTciren in the United States (for a review, see Brown et
al., 1988~.
The aspects of the conventional gender identity package acquired
in infancy are systematically reinforced and policed by the widest va-
riety of audiences. Children first learn about modesty and shame,
and systematic restrictions are placed on their access to various bod-
iTy pleasures. Their earliest inquiries about sexuality are commonly
unanswered, their bodily parts and reproductive processes are either
mislabeled or nonTabeled (Sears et al., 1957; Gagnon, 1965~. It is
characteristic of the majority of families to avoid references to sexual
matters and protect children from sexual information. Nearly all
retrospective studies of adolescents and adults on sources and timing
of sexual learning indicate the limited role that parents play in these
matters.
Later Childhood}
The transition of children from the home to elementary school has
clearly changed with the increase of working mothers and day-care
or preschool programs. Many of the experiences that once charac-
terized the first day of school are now spread out over a much longer
period. The significance of the first six years of school has probably
not changed a great clear, however. The elementary school in its nor-
mal practices extends and further reinforces the conventional gentler
role package in still another set of environments. School opportu-
nities and peer relationships sharpen the gender divisions between
boys and girls in both formal and informal school programs. Fail-
ure in schools for either academic or other reasons begins to set the
stage for nonconformist and risk-taking behaviors that characterize
young people who are reached inadequately by the schools them-
seIves. Pressures toward general conformity to rules and regulations
offer other opportunities for deviance among chiTciren.
There are still strong tendencies for children to spend the major-
ity of their time and emotions in same-gencler peer groups. Whereas
the strength of gender divisions has been growing weaker among ur-
ban, upper middle class groups, the support for same-gender frien(l-
ships remains strong among most social groups in the society (Hess,
1981~. Schools tend to reinforce these patterns through both the cul-
tural preferences of teachers and the institutionaTizecl gentler prac-
tices of the school itself.
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SEXUALITY ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE ~ 509
Television maintains its continuing pressure on gender role con-
formity through Saturday morning programming for children, partic-
ularly the advertisements, as well as through programming directed
toward aclults that is seen by children. Of particular importance to
sexuality are the effects of these materials on what children expect
to happen in adolescence and adulthood. Indeed, perhaps the most
important training that children receive about the social context of
their sexual futures comes from the mass media, largely television,
but also from the cinema shown on television. Thus, the importance
of physical attractiveness, success with the opposite gender, falling
in love, being a member of a couple, and high consumption standards
are the staples of adult television that children watch (Brown et al.,
1988).
Although there is evidence of an increase in more explicit sexual
or sexuaTity-related mass media materials, the effect of these materi-
als on prepubertal children is unknown. This new explicitness exists
at two levels. The first is the one that attracts attempts at social
control: programs or magazines that contain nudity, open references
to sexuality, or language that may offend. Although this material
often evokes attempts at censorship, the majority of prepubertal
chiTciren may not understancl much of it. The second aspect of the
new explicitness is the relatively constant public debate conducted
in the mass media about such topics as pornography, contraception,
abortion, and adolescent sexuality, as well as public education pro-
grams about AIDS prevention. This openness of debate and public
discussion about sexuality, without any explicitly sexual depictions,
may offer more informal sexual information to older children than
pornography. For example, the access of girls to mass market maga-
zines intendecl for women, which heavily emphasize issues of sexual
adjustment, orgasm, extramarital sex, and sexual dysfunction, may
be more critical than the availability of more sexually open materials
in movies or on television. The recency of this increased sexual open-
ness means that we do not yet have a generation that has grown up
under this informational regime. These mass media forces in sexual
eclucation of the prepubertal young are also relevant to the adoles-
cent and young adult periods as well, but equally little is known
about their consumption or influence. It may well be that exposure
to these materials actually has no consequence for the current or
future lives of children or young people; the dilemma is that there is
no acceptable scientific evidence one way or the other.
This is also the period! in life when sex play among children
begins to take place. In the early years, most sex play among younger
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510 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
children has motives specific to their developmental stage (Gagnon,
1965~. In these cases, adult interpretation of the conduct as sexually
motivated (i.e., motivated by sexual desires possessed by adults) is
probably in error. Among most children, even when they are close to
puberty, the motivation for such exploration is probably not the full
complement of adult sexual desires or preferences. However, there is
evidence that some older chiTciren, who live in environments in which
the sexual conduct of-adults is more observable and acceptable or
who are targets for the sexual interest of postpubertal youth, may be
involved in sexual experimentation which in techniques and motives
is more like that of adults. Much of this evidence comes from studies
of child sexual abuse (FinkeThor, 1984~.
Despite the growth of sexual knowledge from media sources,
there is little evidence that either parents or schools have engaged in
vigorous attempts to reduce the general sexual ignorance of children
during these years, although this may be changing as a consequence
of the dangers associates! with AIDS. For example, the recent Na-
tional Health Interview Survey found that approximately 60 percent
of parents with children and adolescents from ages 10 to 17 reporter!
that they had talked to these youngsters about AIDS (Dawson and
Thornberry, 1988~. It is not clear what their children would re-
port about the same matter. Most pre-AIDS research reports that
teaching about sex and reproduction remains limited in the schools
(Jones et al., 1986:57-58~. Even AIDS risk prevention programs for
children tend to be less informative than they might be. Studies in
the last decade suggest that even youthful parents rarely tell their
children much about sexuality (Kline et al., 1978~. What seem to be
most strongly reinforced publicly are conventional marriage, family,
and reproductive roles, whereas sexual knowledge remains part of a
covert underground fed indirectly by the media and peers.
Both the physical assault of children and the sexual contacts
of children with adults are important experiences that have only
recently become the focus of intense public debate, criminal proceed-
ings, and social movements (FinkeThor, 1984; Russell, 1984~. Both of
these experiences, in combination or separately, may have important
consequences on adult social and sexual adjustment. There is esti-
mated to be a substantial amount of sexual contact between adults
(usually male) and young children of both genders which varies in du-
ration, level of sexual intimacy, and degree of consanguinity (Finkel-
hor, 1979~. However, the actual amount of such contacts and their
impact are often obscured by research methods and classificatory
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526 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
women in these divorces are often left with the full care of adolescent
children. Women who divorce in this period are often much less
marriageable than their former spouses.
The importance of the mass media as a source of fantasy or
reassurance may increase in these years. Soap operas and sporting
events may serve similar functions for gender-segregated audiences.
The crisis of aging may be particularly acute for gay men among
whom youth, at least in the recent past, was an important aspect of
sexual relations. This may not be as acute among lesbians, partic-
ularly of the same generation, who may be involved in quite stable
Tong-term relationships. What impact the AIDS epidemic will have
on the traditional focus on youth in the gay community is unclear.
Sharp declines in the number of partners of older gay men may well
have impact on the youthful orientation of gay life, at least in prac-
tice if not in fantasy. In this period, both gay men and lesbians with
children will experience the transition of these children into young
adults. Depending on the relationships to their families of origin,
they will share the same problems as maTe-female couples in dealing
with aging parents. The problem of aging particularly among gay
men has been adciressed by McWhirter and Mattison (1984) and
Kimmel (1978).
THE LATER AGES
MicIdle Age
As most individuals move into their middle 50s ant! early 60s, they
move out of the parenting role and their lives increasingly rotate
around their primary affectional-sexual partners, friends, and work
peers. Grandchildren may be reminders of family life, but for most
this is far more attenuated than their own experiences of chiTc! rearing.
Their aclult children and their grandchildren are independent markers
of a transition in the life course.
This is a period of continuing, reduction in sexual relations in
marriage, and some marriages may be almost entirely asexual. It is
also a period when sexual relationships outside the couple decline
in number ant] intensity, regardless of gender preference. There is a
steady increase of nonsexual commitments between the individuals
in the couple as the erotic core of their relationship disappears.
At least some individuals in this period have ceased to conceive
of themselves as sexual actors. This may be connected to clecTines
in health and physical attractiveness. Nonmarital or noncoupled sex
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SEXUALITY ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE ~ 527
may be affected by this process because the psychological plausibility
of an individual being a potential sexual partner floes rest upon
attractiveness and health.
The Young OIL
As indivicluals move out of the labor force in their middle 60s, there is
often a reduction in their interaction with persons younger than they
are. This accentuates the importance of their spouse or Tong-term
partner, friends, and adult children. This is true of those with same-
or other-gender sexual preferences. Traclitionally, during this period!
in the life course, there is often the substitution of nonsexual com-
mitments, leisure, hobbies, memories, and sometimes grandchildren,
as the basis for the couple.
There is some evidence that in the past there was a substantial
reduction in sexual relations among most older couples and that
the majority of couples may have been entirely asexual by age 70
(Kinsey et al., 194S, 1953; Christensen and Gagnon, 1965~. There is,
however, some more recent longitudinal data suggesting that stable,
Tow rates of sexual activity do occur among some couples and that
asexuality is not a necessary accompaniment of aging (George and
Weiler, 1981~.
Health status is absolutely critical to sexual life in these years
(as it is in earlier portions of the life course), because life-threatening
illnesses are psychological as well as physical threats to sexuality
(Martin, 1981; Weizman and Hart, 1987~. However, it is important
to note that changes in the general health of the population are
also changing the life course itself. Thus the phenomena of "youth
creep" (i.e., healthy 70-year owls in 1980 are more like 60-year ol(ls
were in 1960; healthy 60-year olds in 1980 are more like 50-year
olds were in 1960; and so forth, to some upper limit, in both the
physical health and the social desires of older persons) will have
unknown consequences for sexuality. This process may well reduce
the "desexualization" of older persons commonly notes] in earlier
generations (Brecher et al., 1984~.
The business sector of the society has been taking notice of this
more affluent and active older population by providing new leisure,
housing, travel, and mass media products for them. Each of these
products focuses on the greater youthfulness and continued sexual
potential of this group.
Women are being widower! at a relatively high rate during this
period, and some recoupling that involves sexuality does occur.
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528 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
There is often some intergenerational conflict with children about
these recouplings because they provoke both sexual and property
· ~
anxieties.
Among the elderly after age 70, the forces that affected sexuality
in the years after 60 should retain their impact. What consequences
the very large number of persons of this age in the early years of the
twenty-first century will have on their sexuality is unknown.
AFTERWORD
The density of references in the latter half of this preliminary at-
tempt to suggest some links of sexuality to the life course decreases
steadily as the focus of discussion moves from childhood and youth
to later life. This decline follows the national cultural prejudice that
finds sexual learning and sexual conduct among the young far more
interesting than the changes in the sexual life of their elders. This
may be due to the fact that the sexual activities of the young seem
to generate more passion as well as more social problems. Whatever
the reasons, the research literature on sexuality (which is not very
abundant in any case) nearly evaporates as our attention-moves from
the first 25 years of life. Perhaps the graying of the population will
retirees this imbalance, but given the dominant cultural represen-
tations of sexuality in which sexual desire after 40 appears slightly
comic, one cannot be entirely sure. However just because the sex-
ual pleasures and problems in the last two-thirds of the life course
are private and socially invisible does not mean that they are not
important parts of the lives of most women and men.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
sexual behavior
