Tag: menopause

Barren Britain?

Many Childless Women hit Menopause

A new report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, has found that a quite substantial percentage of British women are reaching menopause having not had any children. In fact, the figure is 18.9 percent, making the country the fourth ranking in Europe, just behind Italy, Germany and Finland. It has been said that this is probably due to how British women focused so much on their careers, at least until recently. So what would happen was that they would just put off trying to have kids, and then find that it was too late.

Blaming Feminism?


Others point to what feminism did in the 1970s and 1980s but it’s hard to tell for sure. The report focused on women born in 1965 from 24 countries so they would have had to have lived through the 1970s “heyday of feminism,” and started their careers “during the power-suited 1980s,” when it was quite normal for women to put career priorities ahead of “traditional family values.” The French on the other hand, can now have what to be proud of as their childless figure for women at menopause stands at a mere 10 percent. But there again maternity leave benefits are better for the French which definitely facilitates motherhood. And Portugal must be a really child-friendly place to live.

Barren Britain Boasts More

But, for those British women who are not barren by the time they get to menopause, it seems that on average they go for bigger families. Statistics show that they are on the whole having more children than women from other countries, with more than 30 percent of mothers having three or more kids. Nonetheless, the Brits are still leaving it a bit late. A 2010 OECD report shows that on average, British women are giving birth at 30 for the first time.

Menopause: What to Expect

The Stars and Lay Reveal All

The menopause is different for everyone. And the UK’s Mail on Sunday has written a feature on it, interviewing the lay and famous alike on their personal menopausal experiences. Here are three excerpts:

Miriam, 79, widowed with two children and three grandchildren

I had my children in my early 20s, and then I went on the pill. I used to go to a family-planning clinic in London, where a woman doctor let slip that she took a low-dose pill the whole way through her menopause and never suffered any symptoms. I thought, ‘What a snazzy idea.’ I went on taking the pill until my late 50s and I never had any problems. I worked flat-out as a lawyer and ran two homes — I didn’t have time for a menopause!

Dawn French, 53, actress, divorced with one child


What I know without a doubt is that the pink fog of menopause is definitely shocking. It’s like being frayed at the edges.

Whoopi Goldberg, 55, actress, divorced with one child

It really is a shock when it hits. There’s no countdown: it’s just ‘boom’. All those years bitching about my period, and when it stopped I was stunned to realize how much my womanhood was tied into it. You just think, ‘I’m hot, I’m sweating, I don’t like it!’ Nothing is good.

So the message is clear: just like most things in life, everyone experiences menopause differently. There are many ways (natural and non-natural) of coping with it better; you just need to find what works for you.

Beware of Hormone Pills for Menopause

For women taking hormone pills for menopause – they now have one more thing to worry about their health. As part of an analysis about hormone pills and the possibility of kidney stones, Dr. Naim Maalouf and his team analyzed government research.  Out of the 24,000 postmenopausal women taking either hormones or dummy pills in the study, those who were using hormones were 21% more likely to develop kidney stones over a five year period.

Dr. Naim Maalouf cautioned that women who are thinking of taking hormone pills should weigh the benefit against the risk of kidney stones. Certainly, they should also be aware of potential other health problems including breast cancers, heart attacks, and other serious problems that have been linked to these pills.


The results of this study indicate that in the course of a year, out of 10,000 postmenopausal women taking hormones, five would develop kidney stones who wouldn’t have developed them otherwise.