“Am I Similar to My Mother?” How Women Make Sense of Menopause Using Family Background

ABSTRACT

Feminist social scientists and some epidemiologists suggest that women's family lives may form a backdrop for menopause. Some family contexts for menopause have been ignored by researchers, however. In this article women's discussions of family background were explored in an attempt to broaden social science and epidemiological knowledge of family contexts. Data were collected in 61 in-depth interviews with menopausal women aged 38–60 in a midwest state in 2001. Unprompted by the interviewer, 42 women (69%) discussed mothers' menopause experiences when trying to describe their own; many also discussed other female relatives' experiences. Interview conversations often focused on whether daughters' menopause experiences matched their mothers'. Women's discussions of the importance of mother-daughter ties and their attentions to genetic inheritance suggest that the actual effects of family backgrounds on menopause as well as the importance women place on family background must be explored further, as women are defining and reacting toward menopause within this unexplored social context.

KEYWORDS:

• Family background
• menopause
• mothers
• social context
• feminism
• qualitative research