How puberty and menopause combined can tear families apart in 'House of Hormones'
Women often start experiencing the menopause just as their children are entering puberty, another hormonal rollercoaster
The menopause is a stage of life many people – women included – still know surprisingly little about, despite its far-reaching effects on physical health, emotional wellbeing, and family relationships. In some cases, it can even contribute to family breakdown.
I know that women are often unfamiliar with the reality of living with menopause symptoms – because I was one of them. Despite being a nurse practitioner working in healthcare, I didn’t initially recognise what was happening when I entered perimenopause.
In my late 40s, I started to experience migraines and joint pains, alongside brain fog and unusual tiredness, which I put it down to disrupted sleep. At the same time, I was experiencing emotional ups and downs I chalked up to stress. It wasn’t until a conversation with my older sister that I began to connect the dots.
Anxiety, mood swings, poor sleep
What I thought were unrelated symptoms were, in fact, all linked to perimenopause. This is the transitional stage leading up to menopause, when a woman’s hormone levels start to fluctuate. It can cause a wide range of symptoms: irregular periods, memory lapses, anxiety, mood swings, poor sleep, and fatigue.
Menopause itself is defined as the point when a woman hasn’t had a period for 12 months. Hormonal changes during this time can be profound.
Eager to understand more, I trained with the British Menopause Society. That experience inspired me to set up a menopause clinic at my GP surgery, and later, launch Workplace Menopause Support, which helps companies train staff and support employees navigating menopause.
But menopause doesn’t happen in isolation. Often, women enter this life stage just as their children are entering puberty, another hormonal rollercoaster.
Emotional, impulsive
Adolescence, like menopause, is driven by hormones. During puberty, changes in brain chemistry can make teenagers more emotional, impulsive, and thrill-seeking. Take dopamine, for example, the so-called ‘happiness’ hormone.
Teenagers’ baseline dopamine levels are lower than adults’, but they experience bigger surges in response to new or exciting activities. This helps explain why teens often feel bored and crave stimulation, which can lead to risk-taking behaviours like drinking, smoking, or speeding.
At the same time, their mothers may be experiencing their own hormonal shifts: feeling low, sleep-deprived, or emotionally stretched. It’s easy to see how a household can become tense, with heightened emotions on both sides and little understanding of what’s really going on.
Protecting relationships
When these changes go unrecognised or unsupported, family conflict can escalate. In some cases, this contributes to relationship breakdown, still the leading cause of youth homelessness in Scotland.
For that reason, it feels vital that we better understand what happens when two major hormonal transitions take place under one roof, and how we can respond with empathy and knowledge rather than frustration.
Our bodies shouldn’t be mysteries to us. You don’t need to be a medical professional to understand the basics of what’s happening whether you’re a teenager, a parent, or someone in midlife. And once we do understand, we can take practical steps to manage moods and protect relationships.
Your house of hormones doesn’t have to become a house of horrors.
Lyndsay Harrison appears in a one-off Fringe show, House of Hormones, at Edinburgh’s Dynamic Earth on August 21, with speakers from Parenting Across Scotland and Cyrenians’ Centre for Conflict Resolution, which helps families de-escalate arguments before they become crises.
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