Sexy Grandma Not An Oxymoron

In 5-0h! Series A Look At Boomers' Sex Life

(CBS) 
Foley pointed out that boomers' attitudes about relationships are the same as their parents, but boomers are more open to asking questions and getting answers.

And yet according to the survey, 27 percent of women and 62 percent of men 60 and older considered sex very important. The reason?

Delehanty said, "One of the things we found in the survey is that partnership, whether you have a partner or not, is critical to your feeling of satisfaction about sex. And, unfortunately, women over 60 are less likely to have a partner than men."

But Foley said that 27 percent of women should not be underestimated.

"I think you have to give the culture a chance to catch up a little bit, too," she said. "This is a group of women, people in their 60s and 70s, who in the 1950s were told by the American Medical Association that 75 percent of them were frigid. So if you think about that, they really won their own cold war by still 27 percent of them wanting to be sexual."

And Delehanty noted that according to a study conducted six years ago by the AARP, "Women of all ages, not just boomer women, say that their sex lives are better if their partners are taking drugs (like Viagra), and that goes counter to the myth that women over a certain age aren't interested in sex. This shows exactly the opposite."

As for the reason why the survey found that a significant number of men tried potency enhancing drugs only once, Delehanty said, "Part of the reason for that is that those kinds of drugs, they deal with sexual problems in potency, but they don't increase desire, and desire is the critical thing. And a lot of people will take the drug, thinking they'll feel more desire, but that's not what those drugs do."