>Debra Salings writes:

>Subject: Menses, anthropologically
>
>        Fascinating!  Katherine, would you venture to speculate as to why
>we westerners follow a 'monthly pattern' and others do not?
>Industrialization? Domestication?


The "monthly" pattern is typical of women not pregnant or breastfeeding
intensively.  Most women throughout human evolution and in much of the world
today are either pregnant or having lactational amenorrhea (or
malnutrition-related amenorrhea) throughout most of their reproductive
years.  They may have several periods before getting married at 15 or 16,
then get pregnant and have 2+ years of amenorrhea, a few periods, then
pregnant again, and so on.  In Mali the women will often have a few periods
after 2+ years postpartum, then miss a month or two, then one more, then
they're pregnant again, then a miscarriage at 3 months, then 1 period, then
pregnant again, then several years of lactational amenorrhea, then a few
months of periods and pregnant again, etc. etc.   Many women in the West
begin menstruating well before marriage, then use birth control to avoid
pregnancy (and birth control pills mimic monthly menstruation) then get
pregnant once and so have 9 months without periods, then don't nurse, so
their periods come back at 6 weeks post-partum and they use birth control
for 2 years, then get pregnant again and don't nurse, so only 9 months of no
periods, and then several decades of birth control with monthly periods.

Sorry I didn't make this clear the first time.

Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
e-mail to [log in to unmask]