Our analyses sought to identify factors that predict the number of sexual partners (none, one, two or more) respondents had in the twelve months preceding the survey. At the bivariate level, numbers of sexual partners were patterned by gender and age (Table 2). About three fourths of respondents reported having one partner in the previous year. Women were more than twice as likely as men to have had no partners (21.8% and 9.7%, respectively), whereas men were almost three times more likely than women to have had multiple partners (14.8% and 5.0%, respectively). The proportion of men and women with no partner increased with age, while the proportion reporting two or more partners decreased. Yet, where the percentage of men reporting one partner remained fairly constant across age, the percentage of women reporting one partner was lower at older ages; this gender difference was particularly pronounced among people 55 and older.
The number of partners a person reported was strongly associated with cohabitation status. (Ninety-four percent of currently cohabiting respondents were married.)5 More than nine tenths of cohabiting women and men reported having one partner in the past year. Of the remainder, cohabiting men were more likely to have had two or more partners and cohabiting women were more likely to have had no sexual partner, although these differences were not large (Table 3).6 These patterns were more pronounced among older (50 to 59) cohabiters. Gender differences among respondents who were not cohabiting were far more dramatic. Non-cohabiting men were almost equally likely to report no, one, or multiple partners in the previous year (29.7%, 35.9%, and 34.5%, respectively). In contrast, more than half (53.4%) of non-cohabiting women had no sexual partner in the preceding year, with 35.3% reporting one partner and 11.3% reporting two or more.
[at 40, about 7% of men and 12.5% of women have no sexual partner in the past year]
[...]
Additional models tested the effects of self-reported physical health (in response to the question, “In general, would you say your health is…[excellent, good, fair, poor]?”) and menopause status (women only), both of which have been empirically linked to sexual desire and behavior. However, neither physical health nor menopause status were significant predictors of numbers of sexual partners, for men or women, in any of the regression models we tested (models not shown). We also tested for interactions among key variables (cohabitation status and age, race, income, education, and sexual attitudes; and race and sexual attitudes). None of the interaction terms predicted numbers of sexual partners for men or women (models not shown).
[...]
Our analyses suggest that the reasons for being without a sexual partner were more complex for women than for men, while the reasons for having multiple partners were more complicated for men. Cohabitation status and age were the strongest predictors of sexual partnering patterns among men (Table 4, esp. Model 4). The odds of not having a sexual partner in the previous year were 44 times higher for non-cohabiting than cohabiting men; similarly, the odds of having two or more partners were eight times higher for non-cohabiting than cohabiting men. Men aged 55 and older were significantly more likely than younger men to have been without a sexual partner, while men aged 50 to 54 were less likely to have had multiple partners. Both measures of sexual permissiveness — approval of sex without love and of premarital sex — were also strong predictors of men having two or more partners. White men were significantly less likely than men of color to have had multiple partners.
For women as for men, numbers of sexual partners were significantly predicted by cohabitation status and age; also important were women's educational attainment and their beliefs about sexuality (Table 5, Model 4). The odds of having no sexual partners in the preceding year were 29 times higher for non-cohabiting than for cohabiting women; likewise, the odds of having multiple partners were 22 times higher for non-cohabiting than for cohabiting women. Women aged 50 and older were far more likely to report no sexual partners than were women aged 40 to 44; this effect was strongest for women 55 and older. Age was not, however, associated with multiple partners for women. Women who approved of premarital sex were much more likely to have had a sexual partner than women who disapproved. Similarly, women who approved of sex without love were more likely to have had two or more partners than their disapproving counterparts. Women who had completed at least some college were more likely to report being without a sexual partner and to name multiple partners than women with a high school diploma or GED. (We address this seeming contradiction below.)
[...]
Interestingly, age predicted only the absence of sexual partners for women, whereas it predicted both a lack of partners and multiple partners for men. The differential effect of age by gender probably stems from gender differences in the availability of partners and cultural beliefs about age, gender, and sexual desirability. As age increases, the pool of sexual partners available to heterosexual women shrinks disproportionately relative to the pool available to men, due to higher rates of mortality among men and social norms pairing younger women with older men. In our sample, 19% of women with partners had partners aged 60 or over, compared with only 7% of partnered men. (Women's and men's partners were 50.2 and 44.7 years old on average, respectively.) Moreover, the cultural belief that age diminishes sexual attractiveness applies earlier and with greater force to women than to men, such that older women are perceived as less attractive sexual partners than similarly aged men — by women as well as by men. In short, although ageism reduces both women and men's sexual prospects, women's are further restricted by sexism. The effect of age cannot be reduced to greater sexual conservatism among older cohorts (although sexual conservatism was greater at older ages for both genders)9, for attitudes about sexuality were also significant predictors of numbers of sexual partners.
The data also supported our hypothesis (H3) that conservative attitudes about sexuality would be associated with fewer sexual partners. These factors played out somewhat differently by gender (H3a), though not to as great an extent as we had anticipated. Disapproval of premarital sex was strongly associated with lack of sexual partners for women, but not for men; yet, men were less likely to have multiple partners if they frowned on premarital sex. Both women and men were more likely to have multiple partners if they approved of sex without love. Claims about causality should be made with caution. It may be that people who find sex without love acceptable have more partners than people who disapprove because they are more willing to engage in “casual” sex. However, people who have several partners in a year may say they approve of sex without love as a way of justifying their own behavior. (The effects of sexual conservatism are not reducible to age/cohort, as noted above.)
It is worth considering why attitudes about premarital sex affected women's and men's sexual partnering in different ways (albeit in predicted directions). We introduced beliefs about premarital sex into our analyses as a measure of general sexual conservatism. One interpretation of our findings is that sexual conservatism impinges on men's conduct at a “higher” threshold than it does on women's: Where sexual conservatism prompts men to eschew non-monogamy and/or rapid successions of partners, it causes women to reject casual partners (leaving women more likely to have no partners).10 Another possibility is that the women in our study who disapproved of premarital sex did so literally, disapproving of sex before any marriage at any age (including second marriages), whereas their male counterparts disapproved of sex before first marriage. The facts that the majority of respondents without partners — 84% of the women and 83% of the men — were neither cohabiting nor currently married, and that most of the variation in number of partners occurred among non-cohabiters (see Table 3), support the latter explanation.
[...]
Of course, not all sexual encounters are equivalent, nor is it necessarily the case that the more encounters a person has, the better. It is therefore worth examining several key dimensions of the partnering experiences of sexually active respondents, including types of partners, duration of sexual relationships, and physical and emotional satisfaction with those relationships. Over 95% of women and men reported that one of the partners with whom they had sex in the last 12 months was their “husband or wife or regular sexual partner” (Table 6). Of these, 89% (811 of 908) reported that their primary sexual partner was a spouse or cohabiter. Men were more likely than women to report having other types of partners in addition or instead of spouses/regular partners, including “close personal friend[s],” “neighbor, co-worker, long-term acquaintance[s],” “casual date or pick-up[s],” and “person[s] you paid or paid you for sex.”12 A closer look at the combinations of types of partners reported reveals that 95.7% of women and 88.9% of men had only one type of partner, the vast majority of whom were spouses/cohabiters/regular partners.
[...]
Sexually active respondents generally found their primary sexual relationships to be physically and emotionally satisfying.15 Among people with one partner, 81% of men and 81% of women described their sexual relationships as extremely or very physically satisfying; similarly, 86% of men and 77% of women rated their relationships as extremely or very emotionally pleasurable. Levels of satisfaction with primary sexual partners were slightly lower among respondents with multiple partners: 68% of men and 71% of women reported being extremely or very physically satisfied and 62% of both genders reported being extremely or very emotionally pleased. People may, of course, seek additional partners out of physical and/or emotional dissatisfaction with their primary relationships. However, it is also the case that satisfaction levels vary according to the type of relationship (more varied among people with multiple partners). Over 80% of participants with spouses or “regular” sexual partners reported being extremely or very physically satisfied and emotionally pleased, compared with about half of those partnered with close friends or acquaintances, and about 15% of those with casual dates.
[...]
Conclusion
The most important finding of this study is that aging affects the sexual lives of heterosexual women earlier and more adversely than it affects the sexual lives of heterosexual men. This differential effect of age by gender is not reducible to greater conservatism among older cohorts of women, or to age-gender patterns in cohabitation status, and it merits further scrutiny. We believe that ageism and sexism, which together promote a view of older women as undesirable or inappropriate sexual partners (even among women themselves), lie at the heart of these patterns, alongside higher male mortality rates, which limit disproportionately the availability of sexual partners for older women. These gendered patterns may become even more pronounced if rates of marriage and remarriage continue to decline, especially among women.
[...]
As the Baby Boom generation, with its more liberal sexual attitudes and behaviors, swells the ranks of those over 60, and as members of Generation X enter middle age, mass media and other market-driven institutions will find it in their interest to cater to this sizeable group. New cultural images of middle-aged and older women and men, along with exposure to a generation of parents and grandparents who continue to see sexuality as an integral aspect of their lives, may alter attitudes of younger generations about sexual desire and activity in mid- and later life — such that they are more likely to perceive themselves and others their age as appropriate romantic and sexual partners (on “structural lag” in general, see Riley, Foner, & Waring, 1988). The 2003 box office success of Something's Gotta Give, a romantic comedy about the sexual relationship between a woman in her late 50s (Diane Keaton) and man in his early 60s (Jack Nicholson), suggests that this process may already be underway.
Carpenter, Laura M., Constance A. Nathanson, and Young J. Kim. "Sex after 40?: Gender, ageism, and sexual partnering in midlife." Journal of Aging Studies 20.2 (2006): 93-106.
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Overall, men were more likely than women to be sexually active, report a good quality sex life, and be interested in sex. These gender differences increased with age and were greatest among the 75 to 85 year old group: 38.9% of men compared with 16.8% of women were sexually active, 70.8% versus 50.9% of those who were sexually active had a good quality sex life, and 41.2% versus 11.4% were interested in sex. Men and women reporting very good or excellent health were more likely to be sexually active compared with their peers in poor or fair health: age adjusted odds ratio 2.2 (P less than 0.01) for men and 1.6 (P less than 0.05) for women in the midlife study and 4.6 (P less than 0.001) for men and 2.8 (P less than 0.001) for women in the later life study. Among sexually active people, good health was also significantly associated with frequent sex (once or more weekly) in men (adjusted odds ratio 1.6 to 2.1), with a good quality sex life among men and women in the midlife cohort (adjusted odds ratio 1.7), and with interest in sex. People in very good or excellent health were 1.5 to 1.8 times more likely to report an interest in sex than those in poorer health. At age 30, sexually active life expectancy was 34.7 years for men and 30.7 years for women compared with 14.9 to 15.3 years for men and 10.6 years for women at age 55. This gender disparity attenuated for people with a spouse or other intimate partner. At age 55, men in very good or excellent health on average gained 5-7 years of sexually active life compared with their peers in poor or fair health. Women in very good or excellent health gained 3-6 years compared with women in poor or fair health. [...]
Partnership drives sexual activity, particularly in later life. Between 70% and 80% of men across all age groups reported having a partner, compared with 67.5% of women aged 25-54 and fewer than 40% of women aged 75 and older. This finding reflects the longer life span of women, the age structure of marriage in the United States and other countries whereby men tend to marry younger women, and the higher proportion of older men with much younger partners. As found by others, men and women with partners in middle and later life were equally likely to be sexually active, but the frequency of sexual activity declined across age groups for women more than for men. Many sexually active people in this study rated the quality of their sex life as less than good, including about half of sexually active older women. Particularly little has been known about the quality of older women’s sexual lives.
Sexually active life expectancy was calculated as a function of gender and health. Overall, the study found that men live a significantly greater proportion of their adult life as sexually active (due at least in part to more years of partnership than women) yet lose significantly more years of sexually active life as a result of poor health than do women. This resonates with findings from a previous analysis using the NSHAP dataset, showing that men’s physical health problems were most commonly cited by both sexes as the reason for sexual inactivity in later life. The stronger association between sexually active life expectancy and health found in men may be explained in part by the effects of common chronic illnesses (for example, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, prostate cancer) and their treatments on erectile function. Loss of erectile function diminishes or prohibits penetrative intercourse and is often accompanied by a decline in or cessation of a man’s sexual activity and sexual satisfaction.
[...]
Interest in sex among women of the same age in the two nationally representative cohorts surveyed 10 years apart was relatively stable. In contrast, significantly more men aged 57-64 in the later life cohort reported an interest in sex than men of the same age surveyed 10 years earlier. This was true for men with and without a partner in both cohorts and corroborates a positive secular trend in attitudes about sex found among older men surveyed 30 years apart in a 2001 study of 70 year olds in Gothenburg, Sweden.28 The difference may partly reflect the introduction of the highly effective and widely promoted male erectile dysfunction drugs to the US and European markets, beginning with sildenafil in 1998. More than 14% of US men surveyed in 2005-6 by NSHAP reported that they had taken prescription or non-prescription drugs or supplements to improve sexual function in the previous 12 months.1 With this secular increase in sexual interest among older men, the gender gap in later life interest in sex has also increased: among men aged 57-64 with partners, 76.7% reported an interest in sex compared with 35.9% of women with partners (only 12% of women without partners compared with 68% of men without partners were interested). Consistent with this finding, sexually active life expectancy at age 55 was longer for men surveyed in 2005-6 compared with men surveyed 10 years earlier (4.8 months longer overall, 12 months longer for men with partners), and increased only for women with a partner (7.2 month increase).
Lindau, Stacy Tessler, and Natalia Gavrilova. "Sex, health, and years of sexually active life gained due to good health: evidence from two US population based cross sectional surveys of ageing." BMJ: British Medical Journal 340 (2010).
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Demographers have written extensively on age hypergamy, the tendency of men to marry women younger than themselves. In this article, we shed light on how this pattern is linked to gender and class systems in the contemporary United States. Our empirical analysis shows that the pattern of men “marrying down” in age becomes more extreme the older men are when they marry, a regularity not noted in past literature. In addition to documenting this pattern, we advance possible explanations, using data to adjudicate between them where possible.
Some explanations of hypergamy focus on men’s preferences, which are seen to be affected by socio-cultural conditioning or biological hard-wiring. A widely acknowledged aspect of the gender system is that women are judged more by their physical attractiveness than men are. Because the standard of beauty privileges youthful looks, judging women by looks creates a cultural “double standard of aging” (Carpenter, Nathanson, and Kim 2006; Gibson 1996; Sontag 1979). If actresses and models for television, movies, and magazines are any indication, the ideal is a woman in her early 20s. If the age of ideal female attractiveness does not shift as men themselves age, then the older a man is when he marries, the less attractive women his own age will look to him and the more years below his own age he will want to marry.
An evolutionary perspective provides a second reason to expect that, the older men are when they marry, the more years they will want to marry down. Evolutionary theorists argue that a man’s preference for younger women is the result of evolution selecting on male preferences that increase the probability that he will have offspring; given fecundity differences by age, selecting a younger woman partner increases the likelihood that he will have children (Buss 1998; Kenrick and Keefe 1992; Wiederman 1993). In this view, whether or not men consciously desire children, they have an evolutionarily imprinted preference for young, fecund women, or for appearances that correlate with fecundity. Of course, it is also possible that a conscious desire for children (for evolutionary or other reasons) leads men to prefer younger wives. If so, men who marry at an age when their female age-mates are no longer fecund are especially likely to prefer to marry down in age. However, if a conscious desire for children is what motivates hypergamy, we would not expect older men to prefer younger postmenopausal women to older postmenopausal women, since neither can bear children.
We also consider women’s preferences, which must be relevant given that a marriage requires two willing partners. If men prefer young women, the competition for young women will be intense; since there are not enough young women to go around, the kind of men that young women seek will be an important determinant of which older men get to marry younger women. Thus, women’s preferences in marriage markets will have powerful effects. To the extent that there are expectations that women should be primary caretakers of children while men are the primary breadwinners, and to the extent that various factors limit women’s earnings, women are motivated to evaluate men by their earning power. Thus, we would expect that older men with higher income potential are able to marry further down in age. Lacking a direct measure of earnings, we test this hypothesis by using men’s education at the time of marriage as a proxy for their long-term earning power.
[...]
Age heterogamy
Discussions of age hypergamy in demography are embedded in a broader literature on marital homogamy by age, race, education, and social class. In one sense age fits the pattern of homogamy—there is a strong positive correlation between spouses’ ages. But, to the extent that there is heterogamy by age, it is much more frequently the man who is older. Demographers have noted that the age gap in first marriages in favor of husbands decreased from an average of four years at the turn of the twentieth century to slightly more than two years in the 1970s (Glick and Lin 1986; Presser 1975). Presser argued that the closing of this gap was good for and reflective of increasing gender equality: when women marry too young, they may interrupt their education in order to work to help put their husband through college, and career investment may be interrupted for early childbearing. She also speculated that women feel less assertive when they have less education or job experience than their spouse, something made more likely when women are younger than their husbands. She also reversed the causal arrow, arguing that gender inequality increases women’s need to derive their economic status from men, and, given that men’s earnings rise with age, women are motivated to prefer older men. While her analysis was valuable in linking hypergamy to the gender system, Presser did not speculate about why men would marry down in age more when they themselves were marrying later, the phenomenon we seek to explain.
[...]
Demographers have noted that men on average marry further down in age in late first marriages and in second marriages (Dressel 1980; Gelissen 2004; Glick 1949; Glick and Landau 1950; Jacobs and Furstenberg 1986).
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One reason that age and education differences between couples, in either direction, are larger when marriages are contracted at later ages is that people are no longer in age-graded educational institutions that largely contain single individuals of approximately the same age and education (Mare 1991). Another reason is that when marriage occurs later, individuals are less under the sway of their parents’ preferences and are freer to make unconventional choices (Rosenfeld 2007). This phenomenon is not inconsistent with, but is quite distinct from, our focus here. The examples given above are symmetrical by gender; for example, both men and women who marry later in life are more likely than those marrying earlier to marry someone of a different race, or to marry someone with education either above or below their own level. Applied to age, this would suggest that both men and women are more likely to marry someone either much older or much younger if they are marrying later in life. Instead we are interested in explanations of the pattern that we will document, one exhibiting systematic gender asymmetry: that men marry down in age more if marrying later, while women do not—that is, hypergamy, not merely heterogamy, increases when men are older at marriage.
[...]
Men’s and women’s preferences in marriage markets What is men’s motivation for marrying down in age, and why would it vary by men’s age? Presser (1975) viewed the age gap in marriages as an instance of a more general norm of hypergamy, the view that husbands should be superior in most respects—such as age, height, education, and income. This norm is undoubtedly an important factor producing an age gap in first marriages contracted when both partners are in their 20s. This should lead both men and women to prefer—or at least adhere to a norm—that the husband should be older. Under such a norm, the preferred age gap would probably not vary much by either the woman’s or the man’s age at marriage. Thus, given that we will show that men marry down in age much more if they are older at marriage, we turn to other explanations.
While we do not have data with measures of physical attractiveness, we argue that norms and preferences evaluating women on the basis of beauty affect the age gap in marriage, and explain why hypergamy is more extreme if the man is older when he marries. The conventional wisdom that men choose women at least in large part based on looks is supported by attitudinal data on what respondents say is important to them in mate choice (South 1991), as well as by a recent speed dating experiment (fisman et al. 2006). “Beauty” has a number of dimensions, including body shape and facial features, that can differentiate women of the same age. But the standard of beauty also valorizes youthful looks. The smooth, unwrinkled skin, thinner figure, firmer breasts, and colorful hair that are more common in youth are seen as more beautiful. Much of the double standard of aging results from the combination of judging women more (than men) by their looks, and the prevalence of a youth-oriented standard of beauty.
Our focus is on the finding that hypergamy is more extreme when men marry at older ages. We suggest a model explaining men’s preference for youth. This model, while oversimplified as most conceptual models are, implies that men will marry down further if marrying at an older age. In addition to assuming that women are judged by beauty, we assume that the beauty ideal against which women are judged is fixed at some relatively young age. The key conceptual implication of a fixed ideal age is that the older men are when they marry, the further they will want to marry down, since all are seeking the same ideal, but those who are older have to marry further down in years to achieve it.
One could complicate our model by saying that men’s preferred age in a partner is a function of two factors, one favoring age homogamy and the other favoring women who meet the beauty ideal best exemplified by women about age 20 years. Then we would expect the actual age targets to be a weighted average of the two causal influences. This too would yield the implication that older men will marry further down than younger men, though not as far as they would if there were no offsetting preference for homogamy.
Evolutionary psychologists see men’s preference for younger women resulting from evolution’s selection on genes that lead men to choose fertile women (Buss 1998; Buss and Schmitt 1993; Kenrick and Keefe 1992). The mechanism could still be a preference for beauty combined with a youth-biased standard of beauty, as in our model; however, under the evolutionary theory, men’s youth-based standard of beauty is seen as hard-wired. According to Kenrick and Keefe (1992)4 the finding that men’s preferences for relative youth increase as their age-mates’ reproductive potential declines is evidence that the preference is genetically coded rather than based on sociocultural factors. If the selection process in evolution is a sufficiently precise instrument that it would create a hard-wired preference in men for younger women only in age ranges where younger women are more fecund, then we would not expect men to prefer, say, 50-year-old postmenopausal women over 60-year-old women. By this reasoning, evidence that men do prefer 50- over 60-year-old women would have to be explained socio-culturally. On the other hand, if we see evolution as a more blunt instrument, then it might select on a generalized male preference for young mates, despite the fact that such selection increases reproduction only in certain age ranges. In that case, we have no way to adjudicate between the two causal perspectives with the data used here.
Any analysis of marriage markets needs to consider women’s preferences as well as men’s. How do women choose men? The conventional view is that men’s earning power is important, emphasized more often in women’s selection of men than in men’s selection of women. This is supported by survey data (South 1991). A recent experiment with speed dating showed women putting more weight on intelligence than men did (fisman et al. 2006). This priority on earnings and their predictors makes sense when the expectation is a division of labor in which women will opt out of or scale back employment while engaged in childrearing. Such an arrangement makes women reliant on men’s earnings during childrearing, as well as in later life, since breaks from employment reduce women’s later earnings and pensions. Women’s preference for richer men is also encouraged by labor market discrimination against women.
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Outcomes of competition in marriage markets, given patterned preferences
As long as preferences about desired attributes in partners are patterned rather than random, marriage markets inevitably contain competition. For example, if both young and old men generally want young women, then there are not enough young women to go around, leaving men to compete with each other for young women. Analogously, if women prefer affluent men, there are not enough rich men for all the women who prefer them, leaving women to compete with each other for rich men.
[...]
The combination of competition and the distribution of preferences may give them only the choice between marrying a partner with undesirable characteristics and remaining unmarried. Some will prefer the latter. Consistent with this reasoning and with men’s preference for young wives, research shows that the odds of a single person marrying decline with age more for women than for men (Smith et al. 1991; Veevers 1988). Also consistent with this reasoning and with women’s preference for affluent husbands, research shows that men’s odds of marrying increase with education and earnings in early life (Oppenheimer, Kalmijn, and Lim 1997), and a corresponding relation obtains when widowers reenter the marriage market later in life (Smith et al. 1991).
There is a second way competition may play out in the presence of patterned preferences: men with characteristics the average woman prefers will be most able to marry women with characteristics most men prefer, and vice versa. This hypothesis is advanced by marriage market models in economics (see Coles and Francesconi 2007 for a recent example) and by the market exchange model of mate selection in sociology (see Rosenfeld 2005 for a critical review). As regards exchange between men’s socioeconomic status and women’s youth, past research, while scant, does not offer much support. Jacobs and Furstenberg (1986) found that, in second marriages, a woman’s age had no effect on whether she married a man with a high-status occupation. Further evidence against the men’s-money-for-women’s-youth exchange is the finding that men lower on socioeconomic measures such as education are actually more apt than others to marry women substantially younger than themselves (Atkinson and Glass 1985).
Our review above has delineated two conceptually distinct ways competition can affect marriage matches. In the first, men and women with characteristics disfavored by the other side of the market are more likely to be left single; substantial past evidence supports this. In the second, market exchange view, women with characteristics disfavored by men will marry men with characteristics disfavored by women. Supportive evidence is surprisingly lacking for the second view when it takes the form of predicting that women’s youth is traded for men’s earning power (or other socioeconomic measures). This suggests that the first mechanism is the more empirically pervasive way competition takes place: older women and poor men may each be more likely to remain unmarried than to be paired with each other. However, our intent is to test for each of the two mechanisms. As regards the first mechanism, we look at whether the ratio of the number of women to men remaining single is an increasing function of age. As regards the market exchange hypothesis, we test whether better-educated men marry women who are younger than themselves, and whether this correlation between men’s education and the age gap at marriage is especially strong when men marry later (since we also hypothesize that men’s preference for marrying down increases as they age).
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Results
We first examine whether the pattern of who is left unmarried suggests that older women are disfavored (relative to young women) in marriage markets. If both younger and older men prefer younger women, we would expect many older women to be left single. Evidence for this is found in figure 1, which shows the ratio of single men to single women at various ages. The figure shows a preponderance of single women over single men at all ages over 35, with a higher preponderance of single women at each successively higher age. Of course, women live longer than men, and this sex difference in mortality itself generates some excess of single women over men; for this reason the figure also shows the ratio of all men to all women in the population regardless of marital status. The comparison of the two sets of ratios makes clear that most of the progression in the sex ratio among singles is not driven by sex differences in mortality.
Next we test an implication of our model’s assumption about preferences: that the extent to which men prefer to marry down in age is an increasing function of their own age at marriage. Recall that we predict this on the basis of the hypothesis that all women are judged against a fixed-age ideal, so that the older a man is, the less appealing women his own age look to him. If this hypothesis approximates preferences and men are to some degree able to realize these preferences, then the older men are when they marry, the greater the number of years they will marry down. Our regression results from the NCHS are presented in Table 2. Model 1 presents additive effects of age and education (as well as controls) on spousal age difference; in Model 2 we interact age and education to test the hypothesis that older men with more education will be more able to attain their preference for younger brides. We begin with the additive model, the results of which are best understood by examining figure 2. figure 2 shows predicted values for the age difference (respondent’s minus spouse’s) for men and women marrying at various ages, with other variables set at their sex-specific mean. Focusing on men, we see that they marry down far more often if they are older at marriage; non-black and black men who marry in their 20s or earlier marry women about a year younger, while non-black men marrying at ages over 60 marry women about nine years younger on average, and black men marrying at ages over 60 marry women about 12 years younger on average.
[...]
first, consider the simplest alternative hypothesis—that men’s increased marrying down as they age is a simple function of the fact that the older one is when marrying, the younger, relative to oneself, will be a random selection from the available pool. If this were the only force operating on both sexes, we would expect that for men the husband-minus-wife age difference would be an increasing function of men’s age at marriage (as observed), while for women, the husband-minus-wife age difference would be a decreasing function of women’s age at marriage. But figure 2 (taken from additive models in Table 2) clearly does not show this pattern for women. Thus, we believe that the most plausible explanation of the increasing age gap with a higher male age at marriage is men’s use of a youthful beauty ideal against which to judge potential partners. As a second alternative hypothesis, consider the possibility that women’s preferences for older men are the driving force. While we find it plausible that some women may find older men desirable marriage partners, either because older men have more resources or simply because the average woman has internalized a norm of hypergamy, this does nothing to explain why hypergamy is an increasing function of men’s age. Thus, this alternative hypothesis fails on logical grounds.
[...]
However, we cannot be sure whether men’s preference for youthful appearance flows from a cultural double standard of aging or from unconscious preferences selected for by evolution. It is possible that evolution has selected on men’s unconscious preference for a youth-based standard of attractiveness, which, on average, increased men’s odds of reproduction, but that it lacked the precision to hardwire a preference for youth only across ages where fecundity differs.
[...]
Why don’t older women have to marry up in age more than younger women? We would expect men’s preferences, discussed above, to drive such a relationship between spouses’ ages. One explanation of the non-effect of women’s age at marriage on the spousal age gap is that the double standard of aging increases the extent to which women marry up with age, while the available-pool factor operates in the opposite direction (the older a woman is, the younger a randomly chosen man is than she), and the two factors roughly cancel out. A more likely explanation is that many older women choose nonmarriage rather than a marriage in which the age difference is of the size that men’s preference for younger women would lead to. Consider a 55-year-old woman who finds that the only marriage prospects she has are with men approaching age 70. She may be afraid of the ailing health and looming care needs of the available men, or simply find them insufficiently active and attractive. She may decide to forgo marriage rather than marry up in age as much as would be required. This hypothesis is consistent with what was shown in figure 1—a decline in the ratio of men to women left single at successive ages.
[...]
But starting in the 40s, when we hypothesize—and find—that men marry further down, college graduates marry down roughly two years further than high school dropouts, with those having high school education or some college falling in between. So earning power does help men to marry further down when they reach ages where they want to do so. However, this effect is quite small compared to the age effect itself; the difference between the gap for men marrying in their 20s and men marrying after 60 is 7–12 years (depending on men’s race and education), whereas the difference between the extent to which college graduate and high school dropout males marry down at ages over 40 is never more than two years (regardless of men’s age or race). Thus, it appears that men’s ability to trade education for youth is quite limited, while men’s increasing preference for youth as they age has a much stronger effect, limited only by women’s willingness to forgo marriage rather than marry up so far in age.
[...]
We might expect that women with more education would be able to avoid marrying up in age to the same extent as less educated women, since what a more affluent older woman has to offer in money or status might offset the disadvantage of her age, and since a highly educated woman can better afford to reject an offer from a much older man, preferring to support herself. However, figure 4 shows no evidence of this. At older ages, when we imagine women would have the strongest preference for not marrying up, there is no evidence that highly educated women are more disinclined to do so. Apparently, women’s education does not make up for their age.
[...]
For example, in couples where men do not have a college degree but women do, husbands are older than their wives, on average, than in couples where men have the same or more education. Overall, the results show that educational heterogamy, in favor of either spouse, is associated with age hypergamy. These patterns hold regardless of men’s age at marriage.
[...]
Conclusion
Our main empirical findings are as follows: 1) the older men are when they marry, the more years they marry down, 2) women’s age at marriage is largely unrelated to hypergamy, 3) when marrying at older ages, better-educated men marry down in age slightly further than less educated men, but education differences are quite small, and 4) age affects whether an individual remains unmarried more for women than for men. These patterns are similar for blacks and non-blacks. We interpret the findings two ways: to give us insight into the underlying preferences in marriage markets and to examine how preferences combine with competition in marriage markets.
Regarding preferences, the findings point to a double standard of aging in marriage markets, wherein women are devalued as they age more than men are. If all women are judged against a standard of physical attractiveness that idealizes a sexually mature but still young woman of about 20, and if this ideal does not change as a man himself ages, then the older a man is when he marries, the more unattractive will women his own age look to him. This hypothetical model generated the hypothesis that, the older men are at marriage, the further down in age they marry; and this is what we found. Men marry down 9–12 years if they are marrying in their 60s, about one year in their 20s. While we have emphasized a socio-cultural source of the double standard of aging, the same preference might have its roots in evolution, selecting on any gene enhancing men’s preference for young partners. On the other hand, our results are not compatible with the idea that men’s conscious preference for women who can bear children drives observed patterns. This is because the data show men choosing younger over older women even in age ranges where women are postmenopausal.
Men marrying at middle age and older may all want young women as partners, but there are not enough to go around, given that both young and old men prefer young women. Similarly, women may prefer affluent men, but there are not enough rich men to go around. Given the resulting competition for young women and rich men, we hypothesized, following market exchange theories, that highly educated men would be able to marry down further in age because they have more income to offer. We found such a difference, but it was surprisingly small. Men over age 60 typically marry down about ten years, whereas the average difference between how far a college graduate and a high school dropout marry down at older ages does not exceed two years, so the extent to which men can exchange their education for a more youthful woman appears quite limited. How can this be explained, given the competition we know to be present in marriage markets, and given the nonrandom nature of preferences? We discussed the two mechanisms competition can produce: men and women with disfavored characteristics may end up marrying partners with disfavored characteristics (the market exchange hypothesis), or they may remain unmarried. We showed evidence that women’s odds of being single increase with age more than men’s. It appears that men’s preference for younger women more often leads older women to remain unmarried rather than to marry less educated, poor men.
[Interesting to note that the study paints the preferences of women as the failings of men (as well as the preferences of men as the failings of men).]
[NB: "labor market discrimination against women" is fictional]
[NB: study determined affluence/wealth "by using men’s education at the time of marriage as a proxy for their long-term earning power"]
[Of course, we can't forget the MCT idea, where if there are fewer men, men will control the market]
England, Paula, and Elizabeth Aura McClintock. "The gendered double standard of aging in US marriage markets." Population and Development Review 35.4 (2009): 797-816.
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This article examines the portrayal of midlife women’s sexuality in 13 recent U.S. narrative films. Content analysis of these films suggests that film portrayals of midlife women’s sexuality are relatively muted, with the most positive portrayals found in the broadest comedies. In addition, midlife women’s bodies are more often displayed as objects of humor than as objects of desire, the ‘‘female gaze’’ at the male body is shown only humorously, and midlife women’s sexuality is primarily validated for slim, white, middle-class women in committed romantic relationships with ‘‘age-appropriate’’ partners. Nevertheless, these films suggest that midlife women should have sexual desires, should act on those desires, should experience sexual pleasure, and should not sacrifice their sexual needs for a man’s approval.
[...]
Cultural attitudes, too, undoubtedly underlie the under-representation of midlife women’s sexuality in film. Even though midlife sexuality is increasingly visible, from Madonna’s videos to Sex and the City’s Samantha and beyond, mainstream American culture more often than not equates sexuality with youth. This is especially true for women who, as Sontag (1972) famously described, face a ‘‘double standard of aging.’’ American culture generally views aging women as unattractive and (preferably) asexual, while men’s attractiveness in both the romance and job markets holds steady or even increases with age (Calasanti and Slevin 2001; Carpenter et al. 2006; Dinnerstein and Weitz 1994; Weitz 2004).
[...]
Affirming Sexuality
Despite the ways in which midlife women’s sexuality is minimized in the surveyed films, overall they suggest that sexuality is a necessary and valuable part of life for midlife women. This theme is clearest in the films Something’s Gotta Give, Meet the Fockers, A Dirty Shame, and Sex and the City.
Early in Something’s Gotta Give, Erica Barry (Diane Keaton) is chided by her sister for her lack of a love life. Erica responds, ‘‘I like staying in and I like this time of my life. Why do I have to defend myself? I was married for 20 years: I’m done!’’ Later, however, after she opens her heart and body to Harry, she declares ‘‘Oh my god! I do like sex!’’ After this, she abandons her previous turtlenecks for far more revealing and sexy outfits, begins a long-term relationship with the much younger Julian, and eventually enters a happy, committed, romantic and sexual relationship with Harry.
[...]
More extremely, the central thesis of A Dirty Shame is that sexuality of all sorts (from cunnilingus to exhibitionism to secretly defecating in public places) should be celebrated by everyone. The film centers around the battle between a town’s selfdescribed ‘‘neuters,’’ who revile sex, and its self-described ‘‘sex addicts,’’ who triumph in the end.
[...]
Other media also seem increasingly to recognize the financial potential of the female baby boomer market. The internet, of course, offers a wealth of blogs, videos, films, and web sites that tightly target audiences, including midlife women interested in romance and sexuality.
[...]
Meanwhile, ‘‘cougars’’—midlife women who seek relationships (or at least sex) with younger men—have become a cultural phenomenon on television, in newspapers, and elsewhere. On NBC’s Age of Love, 40-something Cougars compete with 20-something Kittens for a man’s affections, while on TV Land’s The Cougar, men in their 20s compete for the affections of one 40-year-old woman. Of course, all the women on these shows are taut, dyed, trim, energetic, and fit, and all but one so far have been in their early 40s, so audiences may not necessarily interpret these shows as validating the sexuality of older, average looking, midlife women. Nevertheless, the ‘‘cougar phenomenon’’ also suggests a growing recognition of the sexual potential of at least some midlife women.
Weitz, Rose. "Changing the scripts: Midlife women’s sexuality in contemporary US film." Sexuality & Culture 14.1 (2010): 17-32.
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For instance, Clarke (2006) specifically investigated the sexual experiences of older heterosexual women and concluded that “it has become socially acceptable for women to be more open with their partners about their own sexual needs and desires” (p. 139), reflecting changes in the construction of older women’s heterosexuality. In a study by Talbott (1998), heterosexually identified, widowed women “made a distinction between being interested in men and being interested in remarriage.…Of the women who were not interested in men, none felt positively about remarriage” (p. 433). These results indicate that expressing one’s heterosexual identity through marriage or dating depends on life experiences, such as age or widowhood.
Scherrer, Kristin S. "Images of sexuality and aging in gerontological literature." Sexuality Research and Social Policy Journal of NSRC 6.4 (2009): 5-12.
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In American society, the sexually desirable woman is young and thin. Changes associated with aging such as wrinkled skin or weight gain often bring women further from societal ideals of attractiveness. As physical appearance is very much related to desirability, we explore sexual body image and the way that it changes as women age. Based on in-depth interviews with 95 women aged 20–68, we find women’s sexuality and feelings of desirability are influenced by physical appearance, media, as well as significant others and family. We also note that sexual body image is more often negative than positive for women of all ages and that women struggle to accept changes in their bodies as a result of the aging process and life experiences; however, women in their 50s and 60s are most likely to accept their bodies and not feel influenced by social pressures.
Expanding on Foucault’s (1979) discussion of self-discipline in modern society, Sandra Bartky (2010) suggested that women’s bodies are under constant surveillance in contemporary culture. Thus, women’s bodies can be perceived as partially public—they are objects to be viewed by others and must be maintained accordingly. The public nature of women’s bodies has implications for women’s sense of ownership over their sexuality. When women feel that their bodies are projects to be modified or improved to please others, they may feel less satisfied with themselves or disconnected from the positive feelings that can be derived from their bodies (Waskul, Vannini, & Wiesen, 2007). However, bodies are not wholly public; individuals have the ability to reject others’ impressions of themselves or cultural influences of ideal bodies through this same reflexive process (Cooley, 1964; Crossley, 2006). It is important to understand the way women construct SBI [sexual body image] and how it relates to their sexuality, potential sexual satisfaction, and general feelings of self-worth. We view the pressure to conform to idealized images as exemplary of the institutionalized disciplinary power over women’s bodies that functions to maintain existing gender hierarchies (Barkty, 2010).
Women’s sexual activity during mid-life, between the ages of 30 and 60, has also begun to be explored (Carpenter, Nathanson, & Kim, 2005; Edwards & Booth, 1994; Koch, Mansfield, Thurau, & Carey, 2005; Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 2009; Levy, 1994; Vares, Potts, Gavey, & Grace, 2007). Vares et al. (2007) interviewed women ages 43 to 68, who reported increased sexual desire, pleasure, and satisfaction as they aged. In contrast, Koch et al. (2005) found that women ages 39 to 56 felt that they had become less attractive as they grew older, which contributed to diminished sexual response, desire, and sexual activity. However, like Vares et al., some women’s sexual response was unchanged by age; about one third of the women in the study did not note any difference in sexual response or activity during the 10 years in which they were studied.
[...]
Although marriage was the biggest social transition for most of the women in their 20s and 30s, none considered it a factor that influenced their SBI. Relationship dissolution was identified as having a greater impact. Six women in their 20s and 30s experienced a separation/divorce or the loss of a spouse. After these experiences, women generally felt a renewed sense of confidence about their SBI either through casual dating or involvement in new romantic relationships.
[...]
American women are raised with sexual scripts that position them as sexual objects rather than subjects (Kiefer & Sanchez, 2007; Martin, 1996; Simon & Gagnon, 1986), they often define their sexuality as a part of someone else’s experience rather than their own. Thus, it is not surprising that partners influenced women’s SBI, particularly their behaviors and attitudes with regard to maintaining appearance.
[...]
Women whose bodies fail to appear sexually enticing are passed over as sexual partners and made to feel undesirable and ashamed of their inability to conform (Bartky, 2010). Women interviewed in this study noted awareness of these ideals and the importance of a fetching appearance when they linked looking attractive with being or feeling sexual. The idea that an unattractive woman could be desirable was not one that these women considered.
[...]
Data from interviews with women call attention to the public nature of women’s bodies. When women’s bodies are conceived of as objects for others rather than for themselves, women’s sense of ownership, understanding, and acceptance of their bodies may be compromised. This is important because a sense of distance from one’s sexual self can lead to diminished sexual satisfaction or sexual interest, both of which have physical and mental health benefits. It is only once women stop trying to conform to conventional ideals for desirability that they seem able to silence the voice that demands discipline of the body and see their true reflections in the mirror. Women who reported accepting their bodies notably described bodies that deviated from cultural standards, as being curvy, heavy, “lumpy,” or old. There is an irony in the way that sexuality is deemed a private topic, a personal activity, while women’s bodies are so publicly sexualized and scrutinized. Furthermore, the public nature of women’s bodies and preoccupation with others’ perceptions reinforces double standards that position sexuality as heteronormative and masculinized and women as passive in sexual encounters.
[:D]
[NB: ... nevermind.]
Montemurro, Beth, and Meghan M. Gillen. "Wrinkles and Sagging Flesh: Exploring Transformations in Women's Sexual Body Image." Journal of women & aging 25.1 (2013): 3-23.
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Current trends in involuntary childlessness among men may reflect trends in women’s preferences and the workplace. Seccombe (1991) and Koropeckyj-Cox and Pendell (2007) explain that men’s attitudes have generally remained pronatalistic throughout the past century; whereas women have chosen to delay childbirth in order to increase their roles in the labor force or further their education (Abma & Martinez, 2006; Heaton, Jacobson, & Holland, 1999; Kirmeyer & Hamilton, 2011; Lampic, Svanberg, Karlstrom, & Tyden, 2006). Once in the workplace, men may meet fewer potential mates interested in starting a family, may be disinclined to date coworkers, and may have reduced time to meet potential mates outside work (Gutek, Cohen, & Konrad, 1990; Levy, 1994; Padavic & Reskin, 2002; Salvaggio, Streich, Hopper, & Pierce, 2011). Economic trends reducing interaction with partners interested in starting a family may have contributed to the decline in birthrates among developed nations, and potentially may have prevented some men from having children, regardless of their preferences toward fatherhood.
Because of the nature of childbearing, a large body of research has focused on the perspectives of women and their attitudes regarding first-time pregnancies and parenthood (Doughty, 2011; Hayford & Morgan, 2008; Miller & Jones, 2009; Thomson, 1997; Wu & MacNeill, 2002). Studying women’s fertility intentions has improved our understanding of the characteristics associated with women’s reproductive preferences and has helped shape health policy among developed nations. However, previous research has indicated that men’s attitudes can have a strong effect on women’s preferences toward childbirth (Chalmers & Meyer, 1996; Dudgeon & Inhorn, 2004), yet very few studies have focused on the preferences of men. Analyzing men’s attitudes toward fatherhood can help provide a more comprehensive understanding of fertility behavior and reproductive decision making.
Using data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), this study examines the characteristics of childless men between the ages of 15 and 44 and whether they want to have a child. Furthermore, we test for potential determinants of their desire for offspring.
[...]
Interestingly, we find that men who grew up in a divorced home were more likely to want a child in the future. This is consistent with previous research suggesting that children of divorce will marry and become parents at a younger age (Aquilino, 1994; Gruber, 2004; Keith & finlay, 1988; Thornton, 1991). Among older men (ages 30-44), being naturally sterile was associated with a greater desire for a biological child. We also find an increase in the desire for a child among older men who recently immigrated into the United States, perhaps indicating that these men would like to start a family in the United States.
[...]
With regard to SES, we find that a college education increases the desire for a child, whereas low household income decreases the desire for a child. This is likely related to the fact that most men believe that they should be financially secure before entering into fatherhood (Christiansen & Palkovitz, 2001; Jamieson, Milburn, Simpson, & Wasoff, 2010; O’Brien & Shemilt, 2003). Higher education may impose a delay in starting a family, which, if extensive, may preclude them from ever starting due to sterility or difficulty coupling, regardless of their desire for offspring.
Kessler, Lawrence M., et al. "Starting a Family Characteristics Associated With Men’s Reproductive Preferences." American journal of men's health 7.3 (2013): 198-205.
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In 1974, the sexologist Dr. Alex Comfort was asked, "Why do old people stop having sex?" He replied, "Old folk stop having sex for the same reason they stop riding a bicycle--general infirmity, thinking it looks ridiculous, or no bicycle."
Comfort, Alex. "Sexuality in old age." Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 22.10 (1974): 440.
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