The Selfish Gene

by Richard Dawkins

For various reasons, perhaps connected with the Medawar theory of ageing (page 51), women in the natural state became gradually less efficient at bringing up children as they got older. Therefore the life expectancy of a child of an old mother was less than that of a child of a young mother. This means that, if a woman had a child and a grandchild born on the same day, the grandchild could expect to live longer than the child. When a woman reached the age where the average chance of each child reaching adulthood was just less than half the chance of each grandchild of the same age reaching adulthood, any gene for investing in grandchildren in preference to children would tend to prosper. Such a gene is carried by only one in four grandchildren, whereas the rival gene is carried by one in two children, but the greater expectation of life of the grandchildren outweighs this, and the ‘grandchild altruism’ gene prevails in the gene pool. A woman could not invest fully in her grandchildren if she went on having children of her own. Therefore genes for becoming reproductively infertile in middle age became more numerous, since they were carried in the bodies of grandchildren whose survival was assisted by grandmotherly altruism. This is a possible explanation of the evolution of the menopause in females.