A tip of the hat to Broadsheet, which links to articles about research on post-menopausal grandmothers. Scientists have evidently wondered for some time why menopause occurs in all women at about the same time, "at the half-century mark, give or take four years."Some scientists have conducted studies that strongly suggest that menopause has an evolutionary benefit, providing hard workers for tribes and families: women in their prime not hampered by child-rearing. Grandmothers have the energy to devote to their families, giving their descendants a survival advantage.
That grandmothers provide necessary support to families and the larger community comes as no surprise to most of us. I was just describing this week to my fifteen-year-old daughter what I had learned from my grandmothers. But now that I am grandmother-age, if not actually a grandmother yet, I am cheered by research that finds that "often. . . women in their 60s are as strong as women in their 20s."
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