ANTHRBIO 166 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Maternal Death, Inclusive Fitness, Human Reproduction
9 Mar 2016
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Discuss the trade-off between bearing and caring as an explanation for menopause. Human menopause is a puzzling concept because other animals, and human males don"t experience it. Studies by medawar prove that women are not as good at raising children when they are old. The child of an old mother has less chance of survival than that mother"s grandchildren. From the gene"s point of view, the old mother is better off helping to raise grandchildren. Evolutionary models of human reproduction argue that variation in fertility can be understood as the local optimization of a life-history trade-off between offspring quantity and quality". Menopause marks the end of the human female reproductive capacity life and occurs at age approximately 50 years in all populations (gosden 1985). If menopause does have an evolutionary basis, it is necessary that any fitness advantage offsets the obvious disadvantage of curtailed childbearing.
