Why Do Women Experience Menopause?

By Miss Cellania in Science & Tech on Oct 13, 2009 at 11:11 am

Is there an evolutionary reason for women to undergo menopause? One theory says that it happens so they can survive long enough to be grandmothers. This is not a reward; it is another method of helping one’s genes to survive and flourish.

The grandmother hypothesis suggests that humans have “given up” their reproductive potential in later years in order to invest in the children they already have as well as their grandchildren. Naturally, this is an unconscious, biological adaptation that emerges over many generations and is not the result of individual decision-making. For such a hypothesis to be confirmed it would have to be demonstrated that children are significantly more likely to survive when a grandmother is present than when she isn’t.

Dr. Lummaa has done just that in her study published in the journal Nature, demonstrating that children are 12% more likely to survive to adulthood when they have a grandmother’s support than when they don’t.

Let’s hear it for grandmas! Link

Tags: evolution, genes, grandmother, menopause, survival

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christine
Oct 13th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I think this is a pretty lame “scientific” study. Doesn’t really explain anything at all.
Bonnie L.
Oct 13th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I always thought that it is because as women age, their eggs start developing chromosomal defects at a faster rate. When you are under the age of 30, your chances of have a baby with Down Syndrome are 1 in 1,000, at 35 those chances are 1 in 400 and for every year after that, your chances get exponentially larger. (http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/downsyndrome.cfm#TheOccurr ence)
Alex the parrot
Oct 13th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
A much simpler explaination would be because younger women produce healthier babies.
I think this account is a better explaination as to why women live for so long after their reprodictive cycles have ceased, as most animals don’t outlive their ability to produce offspring for long.
Barry
Oct 13th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
I don’t think that’s an adequate explanation of menopause. Consider the natural lifespan of a human — that is, how old humans get without the benefit of modern medicine and nutrition. It’s about 40 years. Most women, therefore, wouldn’t live much longer beyond their reproductive years, making menopause much more likely to be some weird biological aberration rather than a phenomenon with a clear genetic purpose.

Biologically speaking, just about any event that happens after procreation can’t be explained by evolution. The genes have already been passed on. There’s no genetic way to “filter out” that event if it results in, say, an increased mortality rate. Because of the limited lifespan, women tended not to be menopausal grandmothers. I find it doubtful that they contributed significantly to the success of their offspring to procreate.
Johnny Cat
Oct 14th, 2009 at 12:32 am
I gotta agree with Barry, and the same can be said for men who suddenly, in this era, need “male enhancements” in order to keep having sex way beyond the point their body says it’s over. It’s the 40 year cycle, and naturally, that’s all we’re programmed to perform in.

The rest is just ice cream and dreams of Darth Vader costumes for Halloween.
SWFLguy
Oct 14th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Speaking as a Grandfather–we stop having kids at a certain age so that we don’t go insane having to take care of them all our lives !

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