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Changes and Forms of Sexual Behaviour in old age: A Qualitative Study of Older People in Southeastern Nigeria

The misconceptions that old age is an asexual phase of human life has been challenged by increasing empirical evidence which shows that sexual activity persists in old age albeit in different forms and frequency. This study examined how a group of older people in southeastern Nigeria express their s...

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Autores principales: Ede, Stephen Sunday, Chepngeno-Langat, Gloria, Okoh, Chisom Favour
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10061393/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37360019
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12119-023-10076-0
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author Ede, Stephen Sunday
Chepngeno-Langat, Gloria
Okoh, Chisom Favour
author_facet Ede, Stephen Sunday
Chepngeno-Langat, Gloria
Okoh, Chisom Favour
author_sort Ede, Stephen Sunday
collection PubMed
description The misconceptions that old age is an asexual phase of human life has been challenged by increasing empirical evidence which shows that sexual activity persists in old age albeit in different forms and frequency. This study examined how a group of older people in southeastern Nigeria express their sexual behaviour. The semi-structured individual interviews with 14 older people (9 male, 5 female) aged 60?89 years were conducted using an exploratory qualitative approach. The data generated were analysed thematically, and two themes were conceptualised including diverse sexual behaviour and mutual understanding. These themes supported a pattern among the participants where there is a drop in the frequency of physical sexual behaviour but their sexual interests were described to be more stable. However, the sexual interest is channelled into more intimate sexual behaviour. Thus, sexual behaviours in later life in this study were not declining but showed diversity and modifications; most have adjusted to incorporate more emotional bonding and caring. More so, what forms of sexual behaviour constitute for these older partners are often linked to the presence of dynamic interplay of influencing factors ingrained on the level of the older partners mutuality in understanding and responding to theencroaching age-related changes in their sexual behaviour. Remarkably, these factors could be controlled, which signposts a potential premise and point of policy and practical intervention to promote healthy sexual behaviour in later life.
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spelling pubmed-100613932023-03-30 Changes and Forms of Sexual Behaviour in old age: A Qualitative Study of Older People in Southeastern Nigeria Ede, Stephen Sunday Chepngeno-Langat, Gloria Okoh, Chisom Favour Sex Cult Original Article The misconceptions that old age is an asexual phase of human life has been challenged by increasing empirical evidence which shows that sexual activity persists in old age albeit in different forms and frequency. This study examined how a group of older people in southeastern Nigeria express their sexual behaviour. The semi-structured individual interviews with 14 older people (9 male, 5 female) aged 60?89 years were conducted using an exploratory qualitative approach. The data generated were analysed thematically, and two themes were conceptualised including diverse sexual behaviour and mutual understanding. These themes supported a pattern among the participants where there is a drop in the frequency of physical sexual behaviour but their sexual interests were described to be more stable. However, the sexual interest is channelled into more intimate sexual behaviour. Thus, sexual behaviours in later life in this study were not declining but showed diversity and modifications; most have adjusted to incorporate more emotional bonding and caring. More so, what forms of sexual behaviour constitute for these older partners are often linked to the presence of dynamic interplay of influencing factors ingrained on the level of the older partners mutuality in understanding and responding to theencroaching age-related changes in their sexual behaviour. Remarkably, these factors could be controlled, which signposts a potential premise and point of policy and practical intervention to promote healthy sexual behaviour in later life. Springer US 2023-03-30 /pmc/articles/PMC10061393/ /pubmed/37360019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12119-023-10076-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2023, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Article
Ede, Stephen Sunday
Chepngeno-Langat, Gloria
Okoh, Chisom Favour
Changes and Forms of Sexual Behaviour in old age: A Qualitative Study of Older People in Southeastern Nigeria
title Changes and Forms of Sexual Behaviour in old age: A Qualitative Study of Older People in Southeastern Nigeria
title_full Changes and Forms of Sexual Behaviour in old age: A Qualitative Study of Older People in Southeastern Nigeria
title_fullStr Changes and Forms of Sexual Behaviour in old age: A Qualitative Study of Older People in Southeastern Nigeria
title_full_unstemmed Changes and Forms of Sexual Behaviour in old age: A Qualitative Study of Older People in Southeastern Nigeria
title_short Changes and Forms of Sexual Behaviour in old age: A Qualitative Study of Older People in Southeastern Nigeria
title_sort changes and forms of sexual behaviour in old age: a qualitative study of older people in southeastern nigeria
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10061393/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37360019
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12119-023-10076-0
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