Is menopause a modern phenomenon?
I've seen posts/tweets/heard conversations claiming that until relatively recently women didn't live long enough to experience the menopause.
That it's just not 'natural' to live in a state of 'estrogen deficiency'.
As I'll explain below this is just not the case... women have been living long enough to experience the Menopause for at least 200 years.
I'm guessing the people claiming this are basing their argument on data like that in the graph above (swipe right) which shows the average (median) age of women at death as below 50 in the 1850s.
But there are few issues with that analysis:
The average age at death is exactly that - an average - so 50% of deaths are below that age, and 50% of deaths are above;
The number is very significantly impacted by the high rates of infant and childhood mortality;
This is clearly demonstrated by the modal age in the chart above - which was calculated after excluding all childhood deaths below 10. Modal is the most frequent - and you can see how this has remained above 70 from pre 1850;
The improvement in the average up until the 1950s is predominately explained by the reduction in infant deaths - not by women progressively living longer;
Also more anecdotally just walk around a churchyard and look at the gravestones - and yes you'll find lots of evidence of death in childbirth (women in their 30s) and child/infant mortality but also women living well into their 60s and beyond.
So no matter what you might hear the Menopause is NOT a modern phenomenon.
Women's experience of the Menopause might have changed over the centuries - I'll talk more about that in another post... but we've been living with this change for centuries!
And I'm not for a minute denying, or dismissing the very significant struggles many women experience at this time.. but it's not new.
Sorry for what might be a 'ranting' blog - but I get cross when people are claiming 'facts' when they are falsehoods!
I'll get off my soapbox now!
