Women's and men's sexual preferences and activities with respect to the partner's age: evidence for female choice
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Fig. 1
The mean of the respondents' implied preferred object age for and realized object age for ages 18 to 43 separately for female and male respondents based on 1000 bootstrapped samples.
Fig. 2
Percentage of participants indicating having been sexually interested in (preferred object age) and having sexual activity (realized object age) with persons of the 11 object age categories during the last 12 months. Percentages are plotted separately by participant age and gender.
Abstract
Sex differences in parental investment and in age-related fertility variations are expected to have shaped the sexual strategies for both sexes. To investigate sex differences in sexual interest and sexual activity as a function of both the respondents' and the objects' age, we gathered observations from a population-based sample of 12,656 Finns. We found that women are interested in same-aged to somewhat older men and that this pattern displays itself across the measured life-span and that men show a tendency to be sexually interested in women in their mid-twenties. This tendency was also notable when the men themselves were younger or older than this age. Moreover, we found that sexual activity more closely mimics women's than men's sexual interest. We conclude that women show larger developmental plasticity than men with regard to the desired object's age and that men's heterosexual activity likely is constrained by female choice.
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