Cristina Archetti
World Childless Week Ambassador
This post is meant to fly in the face of those demeaning stereotypes that, from movies to media discourse to unpleasant conversations, tend to portray childless women as “incomplete” and “ignorant” for not having children: they don’t know what “true” love means, what responsibility is, what being realized means, what real life is all about. My argument, instead, is that precisely the experience of having navigated life as a childless woman in a family-centered society is a source of precious knowledge.
I am a researcher, a psychotherapist and an infertility survivor. What these multiple identities of mine have in common is that they are interested in how we manage, or not, to fit in the world. They all want to challenge myself and others to see things differently. Understanding, for all of them, is a first step towards breaking free from schemes we are not aware of, then feeling differently about reality, finally being able to live more fully. This is why I want to share this short reflection.
But why writing about the menopause? It is not merely a matter of me approaching that age. What got me thinking about the topic is, in fact, a profoundly disturbing sense of déjà vu. You see, as a childless woman, I have gone through the most catastrophic change of plan one could ever imagine (most of those who did not have the experience do not have the faintest idea, actually), I have dealt with a grief that has no name, I have rejected other peoples’ definition of happiness, have had to re-stablish the purpose of life in my own terms. Because I am childless, I have learned so much about the illusions and lies women in our society are entangled in: that our value resides in being a mother, in serving others, in fitting into ready- made templates of what our role should be. All women, regardless of whether they are mothers or not, are victims of these stories. There is a lot of what women who reach the age of menopause are getting from society that I am simply not willing to put up with. So, I am going to say it aloud: as a childless woman, precisely because of the experience I have matured for not having children, I have understood something that most other women can benefit from hearing. Call me arrogant, but that’s fine—I have dealt with worse in my life. I can live with that, too.
Before proceeding, though, I need to make three clarifications. One, I expect the menopause any time now, but I am not yet “in” the menopause—please don’t give me the “if you are not going through the menopause, you don’t really know what you are talking about…”-kind-of-treatment. Two, I have no medical expertise about the subject. Three, what I do have expertise in, though, is how stigma, taboo and discrimination are constructed in the world we live in. I also know how to spot the assumptions in the back of our minds that make us see as “normal” what in fact can be questioned. That is what I want to expose here, in three brief points.
The first taken for granted aspect of the whole “menopause affair” is that it is a “thing,” a defined state a woman enters at some point of her life. The onset of menopause, according to most of the sources I can find, begins “normally” between 45 and 55, when one has gone 12 months without a menstrual period. The medical language of figures, standards, averages and cut-off points is rooted in a Western mindset that cannot deal with uncertainty and ambiguity, with life simply flowing with time and us transforming as we go along. As one would understand by looking at how science has developed over history, we have had since the 18th century an urge to categorize, establish beginnings and ends, calculate, draw boundaries. It is the mentality (European, white and male, as these were the people who developed it) that supports a blind faith in science as the answer to all of our problems (does it remind you of how IVF was supposed to work miracles?), that sees (not) having children in binary terms (the result of “wanting them” or “not wanting them”), that conceives the female body as mysterious, “problematic” and in need of “management” and disciplining in so far as it is not “the norm” (i.e. the male body). In this perspective the menopause is not just a threshold. It is the gateway to a “worse” phase of a woman’s life. The menopause is practically yet another face of the oppression of a patriarchal, pronatalist, consumption- and production-oriented culture that defines women, across their entire life course, in terms of their reproductive status. So much for women’s emancipation. This leads me to a second point.
The menopause tends to be described, effectively, as an illness. To the point that it has “symptoms.” The British National Health Service (NHS 2022), to take one authoritative source that well illustrates a much broader trend, lists ‘anxiety, mood swings, brain fog, hot flushes and irregular periods,’ as well as ‘low self-esteem,’ ‘reduced sex drive,’ ‘muscle aches,’ ‘headaches,’ ‘palpitations,’ ‘difficulty sleeping,’ among other “symptoms.” My aim is of course not to deny that these conditions might arise as part of our bodies maturing and our life circumstances changing. What I want to point out is that it is possible to fit them into alternative, non-medicalized narratives. In non-Western societies, most strikingly, the menopause is approached neither exclusively negatively, nor as an illness to be cured. To the contrary, in indigenous cultures from the Māori of Aotearoa/New Zealand to first nations in North America the menopause is a phase of life when women might acquire greater status in the community and gain opportunities for existential and spiritual growth (Bullivant Ngati Pikiao, McClunie-Trust & Syminton Te Ātiawa 2021).
What the Western perspective identifies as “symptoms” might also be read differently by other cultures or not figure at all as part of a clearly distinguishable “menopause”. Among Aboriginal women from the Mid-West region of Western Australia the menopause is referred to with the expression ‘the change of life,’ reflecting the perception that it is not only ‘a natural transition within an Aboriginal woman’s life,’ but also one ‘in which biological assistance or intervention may not be desired’ (Jurgenson et al. 2014). A study of the menopause experience among First Nations women residing in northwestern Ontario additionally finds that an equivalent term to “menopause” does not exist and ‘physical and emotional symptoms medically attached to the biological process might not be identified as connected to the menopausal experience’ (Madden et al. 2010). Jones et al. (2012), observing this lack of vocabulary and pointing out that the Japanese have traditionally not had an equivalent expression for ‘hot flush,’ hypothesize the ‘relative unimportance of the symptoms or subject to daily discourse.’ Mayan women from Yucatan, Mexico, further to this and showing the extent to which the menopause is as much a cultural as it is a biological process, report no “symptoms” at all beyond the ‘irregularity and the final cessation of menses’ (Beyene 1986).
We actually do not need to look outside our Western bubble to come across alternative narratives (see also Hvas 2005). Men also age and experience transformation as they mature. The same NHS website reports that men who reach their ‘late 40s to early 50s’ might also develop ‘physical and emotional symptoms’ like, among others, ‘depression,’ ‘loss of sex drive,’ ‘mood swings and irritability,’ ‘loss of muscle mass,’ ‘difficulty sleeping,’ ‘increased tiredness,’ ‘poor concentration and short-term memory.’ It carefully points out that only ‘some men’ are affected by these changes and that they do not constitute what the media like to call a ‘male menopause.’ Beyond being related to hormonal changes, they might most often be connected to a whole range of possible causes, from psychological problems brought on by ‘work or relationships,’ financial issues, or a ‘midlife crisis,’ to ‘worrying about ageing parents,’ ‘poor diet’ and ‘lack of exercise,’ to name only some of them (NHS 2022b). Yet, when it comes to the female menopause, although it is stated in passim that ‘It can feel different for everyone. You may have a number of symptoms or none’ (NHS 2022a), the underlying message is that they are unavoidable for most women: we all practically need to brace ourselves and “get ready.” Incomprehensibly, no alternative possible explanation for the “symptoms” is provided, not even ‘worrying about ageing parents’—which by the way would make more sense to mention in relation to women considering that, worldwide, 57% to 81% of all caregivers for the elderly are female (Sharma, Chakrabarti & Grover 2016). The only implicit reason for all the listed conditions is, effectively, ageing—not as a neutral statement of fact, rather here understood as “becoming a decaying body.”
I don’t know at this point if this rhetoric rings any bells for you, but I have heard it all before: being branded a defective body for not being able to reproduce. As I have earlier rejected others’ definitions of how “well-(or badly)-functioning” or “(dis)able(d)” my body is, what if I refused to understand the natural process of my body gradually changing as I live as necessarily pathological? Since when has maturing as an adult become an illness? And why does this only apply to women?
The third assumption about the menopause is that, not surprisingly, given what we have seen so far, it is necessarily going to be a “crisis.” Revealing once more the assumption (it is indeed everywhere) that all women must have had children in their lives, the discourse around the menopause warns about the shock of dealing with “the end of fertility,” a change in “our role as mothers,” the loss of beauty—notice how the latter is practically synonymous, for women but not for men, with being a young and fertile body. Well, have we not all of us childless women already been there? Have we not already fought—and won, since we have all survived—these battles? The truth is, we have already figured this out.
Again, without dismissing any possible emotional, physical or cognitive change others are experiencing and I might go through myself in the future, I for sure know one thing: the menopause is going to be no huge drama. As I have done before, I am going to embrace transformation. I am going to flow with the change. I will keep on cultivating acceptance: I have wrinkles around my eyes, so what? They tell the proud story of what I have lived through. I can’t train as much and or hard as before, then I will find new exercises, routines, interests. I will even give myself permission to rest—something I am finding difficult, but I am working on it. I will do my best to take care of the new “me,” with compassion, as I gently enter a new phase in my life journey.
When it comes to the menopause, as childless women we have already dealt with most that its transition entails—realizing we have other functions than reproduction, establishing a new relationship with one’s body (especially after IVF, but not only), negotiating a change in one’s identity, finding alternative sources of meaning in life, just to name the most profound. Since, effectively, “we” are better equipped to deal with the menopause, have you ever thought that “we” could be guides for other women? Consider it and take it seriously. We should also let us be inspired by our sisters and female ancestors from cultures all around the world who have treaded this path of change with pride, not shame.
It is time, this is my call, not just to become aware of the knowledge we have gathered, but also to fully own, and be proud of, the wisdom we have matured through the experience of our hard-won life.
References
Beyene, Yewoubdar (1986) Cultural significance and physiological manifestations of menopause: A biocultural analysis. Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry 1986, 10(1):47–71. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00053262
Bullivant Ngati Pikiao, Kelly, Patricia McClunie-Trust & Kay Syminton Te Ātiawa (2022) A meta ethnography of the cultural constructs of menopause in indigenous women and the context of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Health Care for Women International 43(10-11): 1197- 1217. https://doi.org/10.1080/07399332.2021.1923717
Hvas, Lotte (2005) Menopausal women’s positive experience of growing older. Maturitas. 54(3): 245-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.maturitas.2005.11.006
Jones, Emma K., Janelle R. Jurgenson, Judith M. Katzenellenbogen & Sandra C. Thompson (2012) Menopause and the influence of culture: Another gap for Indigenous Australian women? BMC Women's Health 12:43. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6874-12-43
Jurgenson, Janelle R., Emma K. Jones, Emma Haynes, Charmaine Green & Sandra C. Thompson (2014) Exploring Australian Aboriginal Women’s experiences of menopause: A descriptive study. BMC Women's Health 14:47. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6874-14-47
Madden Sharen, Natalie St Pierre-Hansen, Len Kelly, Helen Cromarty, Barbara Linkewich & Lauren Payne (2010) First Nations women's knowledge of menopause: experiences and perspectives. Canadian Family Physician 56(9): e331-337.
NHS (2022a) Menopause. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/menopause/
NHS (2022b). The male menopause. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/male-menopause
Sharma, Nidhi, Subho Chakrabarti & Sandeep Grover (2016) Gender differences in caregiving among family - caregivers of people with mental illnesses. World Journal of Psychiatry 6(1): 7-17. https://doi.org/10.5498/wjp.v6.i1.7