Opinions Towards Sexual Partners with a Large Age Difference

Attitudes towards heterosexual sexual relationships, where there is a large age difference between the partners, were investigated. The media assumption that public opinion objects to large age-different relationships and that this objection is more pronounced for relationships where the female is considerably older was examined. One hundred and twenty-two participants completed a questionnaire comprising one scenario of an age-different relationship and seven categories of opinion on which the respondents had to rate their own attitude on a 6-point scale. These seven categories included the ‘acceptability,’ ‘happiness,’ ‘length’ and ‘unrealistic nature’ of a relationship, and also how much respondents thought a couple had in common and whether they considered one member of a couple to be looking for ‘resources’ or a ‘parental figure.’ Large age differences in relationships were found to be significantly less acceptable as the age-difference increased and there was significantly stronger opposition to female-older relationships than to male-older ones.