Why should women have menopause at such young age, why can't they have children in their fifties?

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I recently wrote a paper about this for my evolutionary biology course. There are a lot of theories, but it's interesting to note that humans are the only animals that go through menopause - others such as apes are reproductive until death. A theory as to why we do this is because human children take a lot more work than other animal children (we're responsible for our kids until they're 18 - not seen in other animals.) The "grandmothering" hypothesis states that human female reproduction stops early so that the grandmothers can help out with their grandchildren, leaving the mother the ability to have even more children.

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well its because of the hormones and the ovaries

Most likely bcuz as the woman becomes older she would not typically have the engery to keep up with a young child.

when you think about the biological history behind the human body, 50 is not young. 50 is young to us now because of prolonged life expectancy due to advances in medicine.

in the distant past, people were long gone before 50. it takes a long time for adaptation to greatly effect the functions of our bodies. look at the appendix. we have had no idea, for a long time, what it was for. yet it's still there. it will probably be a long time before women will have the ability to continue having children later in life.

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Why should women have menopause at such young age, why can't they have children in their fifties?

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