Reproductive Milestones: the Association of Menarche, Childbirths and Menopause

Anna Štastná , Charles University, Prague
Jitka Slabá, Charles University
Jirina Kocourková, Charles University

The paper focuses on the milestones in the reproductive life course of women. We examine how the timing of menopause and the length of the reproductive time span of women differ depending on the occurrence of other reproductive milestones – age at menarche and childbearing history (timing and number of childbirths). Individual-level data for countries experiencing rapid fertility postponement process and changes in the parity will be used. Using the Generations and Gender Programme providing internationally comparable data on reproductive history, health status and the two phenomena framing the reproductive period of each woman - age at menarche and age at menopause, allows us to account for individual and contextual characteristics of women, namely different cohorts and social groups. The analysis will cover countries that represent different patterns of the onset of the postponement of first births. We compare postponement leaders (typically Northern European countries) with selected countries from Central and Eastern Europe as late starters and countries in between. The first results for Czechia show that the age at menopause is associated with the age at the birth of the first child. Women having firth childbirth before their 20th birthday have an earlier onset of menopause than older first-time mothers. This result remains valid when controlling for the number of children born to a woman, age at menarche, and cohort representing the different stages of the fertility postponement process.

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 Presented in Session 84. Flash session Life Course