New Study claims Cougar Dating Trend is a Myth

Cougar dating has been a hot topic of conversation in the past few years, resulting in the emergence of cougar dating reality shows and tv series like Courtney Cox's Cougar Town. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, it refers to an older woman (usually over 40) dating a younger man. Think Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. But is this really a trend?

According to a recent study by Michael Dunn, psychology researcher at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, the cougar craze is "a myth". He maintains that after studying singles ads from 22,400 singles across the globe, he found no sizable evidence of women preferring to date younger men. In fact, the men also seemed to prefer to date younger women, not cougars.

This has sparked some controversy among those who have studied and written about the emerging cougar trend. Valerie Gibson, a Toronto-based journalist who was one of the first to write about cougars, claims that studies like this promote an "anti-cougar bias". According to a recent article in Time Magazine she said, "Society has always told us that the older woman who is still sexual isn't supposed to exist. We should be wrapped in a shawl baking cookies for our grandchildren and all that crap."

A similar study done in 2003 by AARP found that 34% of 40+ women were dating younger men, which seems to debunk Dunn's findings. It could be argued that because Dunn's study was based on online surveys from dating websites, the preferences listed don't necessarily reflect actual dating behavior. That is, though the majority of women who online date claim they prefer to date men their same age or older, a significant portion do date younger men.

A more interesting question that seems to have emerged from this study is, if there is a significant cougar dating population, why are they afraid to admit it when online dating? Perhaps this is something to investigate.