Stereotypes Of Elderly

Improved Essays
In many cultures, older adults are valued for their wisdom and life experience, in others, like ours, the elderly are not as valued. Though everyone agrees that elderly people deserve respect, the stereotypes that are placed on them by American and modern society do not convey it. The list of stereotypes that apply to the elderly we made in class was long and spotted with negativity, but also with truth. One stereotype that was brought up was that elder people do not have sex, want to have sex, or are even able to have sex due to their age and the chronic conditions that come with it. This stereotype is unfair, dehumanizing, and readily disproven by research. The research cited in this paper, however, does not support the stereotype that …show more content…
The data used by the researchers was secondary data collected from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), via a self-reported, mail in survey titled “The AARP Modern Maturity Sexuality Survey”, and was completed by “1,384 women and men ages 45 and older.” (DeLamater and Moorman, 2007, p. 926). The independent variables were: age, illnesses, treatment, sexual restrictions, attitudes, sexual desire, and sexual partner …show more content…
The conclusion of this study is that while older people may not be having as much sex as the younger population, this aging population is having sex, defying medical issues and social bias, therefore disproving the stereotype via four different hypotheses. In a study titled The Association of Physical and Mental Health with Sexual Activity in Older Adults in a Retirement Community, published in 2013 in the International Society for Sexual Medicine and written by Lynea E. Bach, James A. Mortimer, Carla VandeWeerd, and Jamie Corvin, explore if mental health is correlated with sexual activity in a retirement community in Florida. The cross-sectional study was given in a self-reported, mailed in survey, and mailed to eighty-seven thousand individuals. Twenty two thousand results were used. This study too disproves the stereotype with it’s finding that 55% of males and 45% of females over the age of 55 are sexually active. (Bach et al, 2013, p. 2671) Unlike the last study, this study did find that physical illness led to less sex in an older population, but also found that the self-reported quality of life score, if low, correlated with less sex too. (Bach et al, 2013, p. 2673) While it found correlation between certain factors and lower sexual frequency, this study also found that

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