The Hebrew Nursing Home in Riverdale, New York, is in the news. The New York Times, July 12, 2016, reporting on it, in “Too Old For Sex: Not at This Nursing Home,” and seems to find that it is newsworthy that consenting adults in their 70s and 80s are still having intimate relationships!
Really!
I guess even we Boomer Grandmas and Grandpas are guilty too–we too could not imagine our parents having sex, much less those of our grandparent generation. The author, Winnie Hu, says this supposed new trend is “helped in some cases by Viagra and more tolerant societal attitudes toward sex outside marriage. These aging lovers have challenged traditional notions of growing old and, in some cases, raised logistical and legal issues for their families, caretakers and the institutions they call home.” For us Boomers, forever young is our mantra, and we cannot relate to any traditional notions of anything for our generation.
This Grandma likes the quote better from Marguerite McLaughlin, senior director of quality improvement for the American Health Care Association, the nation’s largest trade association for nursing homes, representing nearly 10,000 of them, who said, “Sex falls right smack dab in the middle of who we are as people.” There is a further quote from another nursing home organization representative that says it is for when we Boomers become residents that they are anticipating and preparing for a boom in sex in nursing homes. I guess everyone believes our parents and grandparents never had sex. I surely hope they expect more than 5% of us Boomers, if and when nursing home residents, will be having sex.
In furtherance of efforts to be of assistance to those residents, a generation above us, who are interested, the Riverdale Nursing Home has stepped up efforts to help residents looking for relationships by having “a happy hour and a senior prom, and started a dating service, called G-Date, for Grandparent Date.” They report that about five percent of their residents are involved in a relationship, and they encourage privacy, and have an actual written, “sexual expression policy,” you can and should read as a link in the article.
About 35% of all marriages now of those in their 20’s and 30’s are of those who met through an online dating site. Will we Boomers need a dating service in our future as we live longer? This Grandma personally knows several Boomer couples who became couples after meeting via an on line dating site. Now, it seems, not only will there be individual formalized dating services in our future communities, they will already have gone through their “growing pains” in preparation for our arrival.
It is wonderful first and foremost that nursing homes are becoming less institutionalized and more individualized, catering to differences in tastes in food, activities, and lifestyles. It is hard for us Boomer Grandmas to even consider a time when we too might need nursing care. However, what is clear to this Grandma is that they have the name, G-Date, Grandparent Date all wrong. It must be changed to GG-Date–Great Grandparents Date and move the ages up a decade at least.
Hopefully, we Boomers will be doing more than talking about sex well into our 90’s and beyond.
Joy,
Mema
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