Menopause and your life
| May 1, 2008
In-Depth Report
Menopause and your life
Women go through several transitions in life related to their reproductive function. Each has its own complex set of physical and emotional aspects. While every woman responds differently to menopause, all women approaching this transition are likely to experience some similar themes.
|
A time to refocus your energy or launch new projects |
Longevity
In the United States, the average lifespan for women is near 80. So, the average woman can expect to live 30 years or so after menopause. Thirty years may sound like a long time, but around the time of menopause, many women begin to sense that life is finite. There isn't as much time left to attain goals and pursue dreams. You may question whether you've followed your own passions, or instead led a life that satisfied the interests of your parents, spouse, children, or employers. In particular, women who now have parents with chronic or disabling illnesses may grapple with mortality issues. You may step back and evaluate how you would like to spend your future decades. These feelings lead some women to embark on bold, new journeys in life or to work to maintain or improve the life they've built.
Identity
As you approach menopause, you've spent at least 20 to 30 years defining your adult identity. A well-established role as a mother, wife, or career woman may shift as your children pack their bags for college or independent lives, your marriage changes with the years, and young people surround you in the workplace or start families of their own. A woman who felt secure in her identity may now feel the sands shifting beneath her feet. In the workplace she may want to begin to mentor younger colleagues. Or she may seek to define herself in new ways — exploring her artistic talent, starting a business, or even returning to school to start a whole new career. Volunteer work in the community may begin to take on greater importance as childrearing responsibilities lessen.
Adjusting to the changing face in the mirror can be daunting, as more wrinkles and gray hairs appear. The combination of lifestyle changes and some of the physical symptoms women experience during menopause also may put stress on a marriage or partnership. Couples may need to take a new look at their relationships and make adjustments or find new activities to do together and separately as they move into their later years. Or partnerships dissolve redefining so many aspects or a woman's place in the world.
Ethnic and cultural issues
Social and emotional responses to menopause vary, depending on a woman's cultural values. She may live in a culture in which women are valued primarily for their ability to have children. Or her culture may equate beauty exclusively with youth. If so, menopause may take a substantial emotional toll. If, on the other hand, her culture values the experience and wisdom that come with aging, she may feel relief and exhilaration at menopause.
Women from different racial and ethnic backgrounds experience menopause differently. Hispanic and African American women tend to go through menopause slightly earlier, whereas Asian American women tend to be slightly older when they reach menopause. And while only 25% of African American women think of menopause as problematic, about 50% of white women see it that way. African American women have more hot flashes than white women, but tend to view them as a normal part of aging that will subside in time. Varying cultures have different views of aging, but it's helpful to regard menopause as a natural stage in a woman's life cycle.
Reproductive agingIt may be said that women live three lives: childhood, the reproductive years, and postmenopause. Experts in women's health and aging have introduced the concept that these are part of an ongoing physiological process that they call "reproductive aging." Simply put, reproductive aging is what happens to the ovaries and other reproductive organs as women age. In July 2001, a group of 27 experts in aging and women's health met in Park City, Utah, for the Stages of Reproductive Aging Workshop (STRAW). Their goal was to describe this process in greater detail. To do this, they divided the process into seven stages, beginning with the early years of the menstrual cycle and continuing for the remainder of a woman's life. Each of the seven stages is described in simple terms by what happens to menstrual cycles and levels of follicle-stimulating hormone as a woman passes through it. The staging system doesn't specifically outline when and to what levels estrogen and other reproductive hormones decline because these changes are extremely variable from woman to woman. Experts emphasize that not all healthy women will follow these stages sequentially — some women may skip some of the stages. The age range during which they occur can vary widely as well. What is the point of this staging system? Eventually, experts hope it will help women and their clinicians determine where in the reproductive aging process a woman is so they can offer guidance as she approaches these stages. Besides helping to improve medical care for midlife women, experts hope the staging system will help biomedical researchers fill in many of the current knowledge gaps about menopause. |
The roles women play
In the mid-1970s, women in their mid-to-late 50s were referred to as "elderly." Today, vital women of the same age might use the word to describe women 30 years older than themselves. In the quest to remain active, women today often take on more midlife roles — and with them more stress — than did women in their mothers' generation. For example, women who delayed childbearing to build careers have children at home at an older age than women of previous generations. At the same time, more women face caring for an elderly parent as lifespans grow longer.
A Gender, Health, and Longevity study of 1,600 women in their 40s and 50s indicated that about half played at least three of four very important roles: wife, mother, worker, and care provider for an elderly parent or in-law. Juggling these routines on a daily basis is stressful. Interestingly, while women cited their domestic, nurturing roles as stressful, they did not say the same for the work roles. The researchers concluded that work may actually be beneficial to women responsible for nurturing others. And contrary to popular beliefs about the "empty nest syndrome" as a time of crisis for midlife women, newer research shows that some women feel more upbeat when their children leave home.
Review Date: 2008-05-01
Harvard Medical School does not endorse products or services.
preview