Anne Montgomery asks me to comment on how many menstrual periods human women
are designed to experience during their lives.  Well, that's not exactly how
she phrased it, but I can't figure out yet how to snip and move pieces of
digests.  Anne, you're absolutely correct that our bodies were designed to
begin menstruating when the hormones were cranked up and when the fat stores
were sufficient to support pregnancy and lactation.  Seventeen years would
be typical for very malnourished populations, 14-16 more typical for
adequately nourished, and 10-13 is what we see in the over-nourished West.
And yes, our bodies "expect" to be either pregnant or nursing for much of
our adult life, so menstrual periods would be few and far between.  This is
especially apparent in studies of menstruation cross-culturally, where
anthropologists used to make a big deal about "menstrual huts" and
menstruating women being dangerous and polluting, and they had to be hidden
away from the rest of society so they wouldn't pollute everyone.  Once
female anthropoloigsts started studying this topic, and
interviewing/observing the women, instead of just asking the men, they
discovered two things: (1) women, for the most part, loved this opportunity
to get away from their normal round of work and hang out in the menstrual
hut and relax and rejuvenate, and (2) they hardly ever got to, because they
very seldom had periods during their lives.  The view of menstruation as
being "normal" month after month, year after year, decade after decade, is
simply not accurate.  Not that I would want to spend 30 years pregnant or
lactating, but contraceptive makers could have come up with a better birth
control pill than one that mimics "normal monthly cycles."  Likewise, there
was a flurry of interest last year in a woman in Berkeley who came up with a
"theory" that menstruation was actually good for women because it cleansed
their uteri (uteruses?) of evil germs brought in by sperm.  She got her work
published in a reputable scientific journal (Nature, maybe?) and even got
one of those MacArthur genius grants.  She was totally ripped apart in the
anthropological literature for her failure to notice that most of the
world's women hardly ever have menstrual periods, and it is difficult to
explain the adaptiveness of something that happens only to Western women and
only for the past 100 years or less.

The most excellent book on anthropological studies of menstruation is
titled: Blood Magic, edited by Alma Gottlieb and Tom whose last name I forget.

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Katherine A. Dettwyler                                email: [log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department                               phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University                                    fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX  77843-4352