Most perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women today are Baby Boomers, and some of them are Generation Xers (born between 1961 and 1981). These graying generations are among the largest and most influential of the current U.S. population, and they're taking America with them through the menopause experience. If you're in perimenopause or have experienced menopause, you're certainly not alone.

Many women today enter their most productive years after the age of forty. Careers are established, children more independent, and a stronger sense of self emerges. Women begin to care less about what others think; inner strength and self-awareness blossom. Although youth and beauty are often considered inseparable, cultural ideas about beauty are changing to include older women. Women are seeing themselves as attractive into their later years, and this attractiveness contributes to the growing self-confidence that often accompanies this period.

But most women of forty are also approaching a decade of dramatic personal, physical, and psychosocial change, a new stage of life that may be occurring at a time when they may be uninterested in — and maybe even resistant to — preparing for it. As personal as each woman's perimenopause may be, no woman is alone as she enters this phase of her life.

Your Kids Are Maturing

Other women your age aren't your only companions in incredible change during these years. If you have children in your mid-to late twenties or early thirties, by the time you begin experiencing the first signs of perimenopause, it's quite likely that your children may be going through puberty and adolescence.

You went through puberty, so you know what your kids are going through when they reach adolescence. Their bodies and minds are turmoil. As kids pass through relatively rapid physical changes (some they see as good, others horrify them), they also begin that important first round of “Who am I?” introspection and exploration. They may feel confused, angry, loving, hateful, homely, childlike, adultlike, happy, depressed, bored, excited, and lonely — and that's all just in the first minutes after they wake up in the morning. If you think the dynamic of an adolescent's raging hormones can wreak havoc on a household, what about combining that loaded pistol with the fluctuating hormonal shifts of a perimenopausal mother?

When you and your child are both trying to figure out who you are and what you want from life, even as you're trying to cope with changing physical and mental patterns in your life, the atmosphere is ripe conflict.

Of course, you also have a rare opportunity to connect with your child on a whole new level that women who aren't experiencing peri-menopause are unlikely to enjoy. But doing this requires a great deal of effort, patience, and creativity on your part. You may or may not be able to turn this dual passage into a positive phase in your family's development, but it's certainly worth a try. You might want to take this opportunity to realize that you and your child are both going through big changes simultaneously and that this is an opportunity to connect with your children on that level.