Hormones And Women Confidence Built In Insecurity During Most Fertile Years

I've heard from so many women older than me that around their 30s, they stopped caring so much what other people thought, and they decided to have fun and do things their own way. That so many women have told me that this happened around the same age, and that they say it's also associated with greater sexual enjoyment, makes me think it's hormonal. The corollary to women getting more confidence-inspiring hormonal situation after their 30s is that women younger than that (puberty-20s) would be suffering from a relatively confidence-depleting hormonal situation.One of my friends posted a research article once about how teenage women's hormones might contribute to insecurity about their looks, particularly around fertile periods. Is all this insecurity and concern about what other people think the price of making the most of our fertility? I don't mean to be getting into biology much since I don't have the time to look it all up. But it seems pretty well-established to me that women's attitudes change sometime in their late 20s or early 30s. So whatever the cause, we younger women might be comparatively unconfident.Perhaps this is part of why men have more career success - they start out with all the confidence they're going to have in their teens, whereas women suffer a confidence drop at puberty and don't get it back until their 30s or so.Wouldn't it be strange if insecurity were reproductively advantageous for women (to make them more concerned about their looks or about attracting a man?) and confidence were more reproductively important for men (for pursuing a mate)? It's hard to know what mating patterns drove human evolution. But this imbalance, particularly during the formative years of careers (high school through first decade of work) could help to account for the imbalance in men's and women's career success. On the other hand, much of what we say about women might be "begging the question." Women might be more "relational, accommodating," and "nurturing" because those are the most rewarding strategies given the way society is set up.Lastly, the funny thing to realize is that if this is hormonal, it doesn't really have to be this way. And it might not even be natural--it could be an interaction between innate hormonal programs and diet, fatigue, hypothyroidism, endocrine-disrupting pollutants, etc. I now take DHEA and zinc. I used to use testosterone cream. These things (prescribed to correct hormonal imbalances) definitely affected my confidence. - - -