Comments on: The heavy cost of having children

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:26:17 +0000

Or see this post for an alternative theory.

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:19:48 +0000

This view seems to take too much from sociology. For women simply maintaining a fertile reproductive system is in itself very taxing compared to that of men. Could it not be that women enter menopause simply because their bodies can no longer handle the rigors of maintaing their ovas?
I am by no means a doctor and can only draw from my experiences of being in a long term relationship with a woman who had severe endomitrosis. As I understand women are born with their full load of eggs. Do they not go stale after a period(of time) for lack of better terminology? Do womens’ bodies have the ability to detect weakness in their gametes?

By: Interrobang

Interrobang — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:04:06 +0000

The old axiom about pregnancy used to be “a (lost) tooth for every baby.” That’s some severe physiological stress. Actually, considering how much effort humans have to put into having and raising children in the first place, it’s a wonder we don’t go into menopause ten or twelve years after menarche.
What I can’t figure out — and this is likely because I’m a misanthrope or a mutant — is why, now that lots of women have the choice not to do this to themselves, so many of them do it anyway. The ostensible “hardwiring” must be missing in a significant fraction of people, because I sure don’t have it.

By: David C. Brayton

David C. Brayton — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:45:41 +0000

@Ian
What other animals experience menopause? Are they all mammals?
It seems that a comparison between humans and the other organisms would be most beneficial.

By: Tophe

Tophe — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:36:18 +0000

I’ve wondered before if perhaps menopause was nature’s way of saying “stop having children of your own and help your children take care of their children.”

By: Ian

Ian — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:44:18 +0000

Have researchers given any thought to this in the context of life expectancy?
Humans live far longer now than they ever lived in the past, and far longer than a typical mammal. You could argue that we survive for an “unnatural” length of time compared with our evolutionary ancestors. Perhaps menopause is nothing more than an artifact of this.
Humans aren’t the only mammals to experience menopause, but because existence is precarious in the wild, perhaps most mammals who might experience it die either before it or shortly after it, so that it isn’t noticed so much.
From an evolutionary point of view, the dying process really begins shortly after reproductive age, when evolution has no more use for an organism’s genes since they’re endowed in that organism’s offspring.
Some organisms may “need” to survive for a while longer to ensure their offspring get a “leg-up” in life, but for many organisms, their offspring are up and running from the off, and if the parent dies, it does not impact the offspring’s survival.
Mammals maybe be more nurturing than other classes, but even so, their offspring develop independence pretty quickly in most cases. It’s only in a few genera that we see the kind of parent-child relationships that we see amongst humans.
Perhaps what we’re seeing is an extension of this in humans. Humans survive so long after their offspring become independent that what might be termed “the dying process” is unnaturally drawn-out. Perhaps menopause is just an artifact of that.