Murphy Brown, Meet Wilma Flintstone : Helping women to defer careers for child-bearing and -rearing will benefit their health and society’s pocketbook.

Once upon a time, a girl went through puberty, found her prince or peasant, married and had babies, each of whom she breast-fed for a couple of years. Rarely did she develop reproductive tumors or heart disease. Of course, hunter-gatherers and medievals rarely lived long enough to get the diseases of middle and old age.

We do, yet thanks to the very slow changes in genetics over time, we live in bodies designed for our Stone Age ancestors. Take a look at your typical Wilma Flintstone. Anthropologists estimate that she didn’t have her first menses till around age 16. Her first baby was born slightly before her 20th birthday and was probably nursed for two or three years, at astoundingly frequent intervals. Even today, many mothers in primitive societies breast-feed their offspring three or four times an hour for the first two years. Primitive women probably had about five or six children over a lifetime, rarely ovulated, went through menopause several years earlier than we do, ate high-fiber grains and fruits and, occasionally, very lean meat and walked everywhere.

Data suggest that reproductive cancers bear an inverse relationship to the number of lifetime ovulations a woman has, and of course, pregnancy and frequent breast-feeding suppress ovulation. (So do birth-control pills; this effect is being studied by researchers.) High-fiber foods protect against some cancers and heart disease, and exercise has been shown by researchers at USC to reduce the risk of breast cancer. Wilma and her sisters fit right into a low-risk profile. And breast-feeding kept their babies healthy too.

Now take modern woman, say the much maligned Murphy Brown. Poor Murphy has her first baby at fortysomething, and it’s a fair bet she won’t nurse three times an hour till the baby enters preschool. She probably eats fast foods half the time. Time pressure precludes an intense daily workout. Guilt hangs over her life, whether she’s at work thinking about junior or at home thinking about work. The baby grows, spills all the flour on her new rug, won’t potty-train. Anyone think the now mid-40s Murphy still has the stamina of a 20-year-old? Murphy is a statistical setup for fiftysomething disease.

We moderns have imposed upon women a lifestyle that conflicts with their biogenetic heritage--actually a male lifestyle. We all know that active participation in an information-intense society demands a committed education, a time-intensive apprenticeship and a gender-neutral mentality. The issue is not whether women should pay the same dues as men (they must) but rather, the timing of the payments.

Here I’d like to make a modest proposal. Since women live longer than men and since their lifelong health and that of their offspring are predicated upon adherence to the ancient genetic patterns, let’s institutionalize childbearing and parenting into our culture in a way that does not cause conflict between women’s physiology and ambitions. How? For starters, women could elect to have their babies in their late teens and early 20s and spend time at home nursing and cooking and running after them without being disadvantaged educationally--if colleges accepted this digression as equal with charging straight through to one’s doctorate.

Perhaps three-month “refresher courses” would be universally available to women who deferred their college or graduate educations for childbirth and home mothering. This would put the thirty- or fortysomething mother-emeritus at the same level as the twentysomething male or child-free female. Many fellowships and grants are offered in the sciences to “young investigators,” with age often being stipulated. Henceforth, these grants might allow chronologically middle-aged but educationally young women to be eligible for funding. The mommy-track might also be an option for those women returning to college or career while children were still in grammar or high school.

If society formally accepted women’s biology and provided for it, many women who resist going back for more education or a challenging job would be more likely to do so. A lot of middle-aged women who raised their kids 15 or 20 years ago hang back from the adventure of education and employment for fear of sticking out or worse, rejection. Look at all the talent we’re losing when these women’s skills could be utilized if we guided them back into the work force in a mother-friendly manner. As a bonus, it would help to control national health and welfare costs.