Critics fault modern medicine for subdividing the process of aging into a series of stages that require medical intervention. This is especially true for middle age and the so-called female climacteric. The extent to which menopause has become medicalized in mainstream Western populations is illustrated by comparing groups of women who have come of age in a tradition of sophisticated medical consumerism to women who have come of age in a more marginal setting, where a combination of geographical isolation and poverty has delayed exposure to medical views of middle aging. Using ethnographic data gathered in a rural Newfoundland fishing village, this article explores the process by which women's notions of menopause as a natural part of the aging process have not yet been undermined by the recent introduction of medical services. Special attention is paid to the positive and negative roles that female social support networks may play in shaping women's experience of menopause.
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