Men produce all the same bodily wastes as an infant (OK, so they are more likely to vomit up partly digested beer than milk, in my experience), why would women having an extra one not produced by babies help in dealing with baby waste? 
It’s debatable that dealing with menstrual fluid can help in dealing with blood, but, well, I’m not a parent, but I didn’t think babies were supposed to bleed all that often.
Mood’s a thing for cattle and love play, not posting!
I was home with my son for a year, so I did most of the diapers, but when my husband was home, we did “Rock, paper, scissors.” I almost always won. He didn’t seem to realize it, but he always threw what would have beat whatever he threw the last time, and as long as I could remember whatever he’d done two hours ago, or yesterday, I’d win.
For the record, though, he was the first one to change our son’s diaper, of the two of us, in the hospital.
“Omnipresent”
Until I had kids, I had never changed a diaper in my life.
And then it just came naturally and instincually. It never bothered me in the least.
Although… at my daughter’s birthday party, when she was turning 3, one of her invitees shit his pants. OMG I gagged and gagged and almost puked cleaning him up.
Why is it different when it’s your own kid?
I work in a preschool. It’s also different when you are getting paid to do it.
I don’t know about a social purpose, per se, unless you count when I am pms-ing, I purposely want to kill people. And I assume blood would be let, if that is what you mean!
I think all of that is probably… not true.
To me, a much more interesting question is why it more or less lines up with the lunar month. It might be coincidence, but I think it would be a big help for a woman trying to get pregnant (or avoid it). I mean not a perfect gauge, but better than the alternative of remembering it was 17 days since the last cycle.
Do you remember being 14?
I was exaggerating, slightly, but hey, it’s all about perspective. I’m a woman in a house of men. How do you people get anything else done?
I think that I understand the OP’s question, so I’ll say “no, not in the sense you mean.”
For most species, the oestrus cycle is closely linked to seasonal variations in the food supply,temperature, migration patterns, and other external factors. In humans, these are relatively less important when a reliable food source is available. Once humans began engaging in agriculture and domesticating livestock, the seasonal variations became much less important. Pair bonding, due to the exceptionally long period required to raise a child, increased in importance. A shorter oestrus cycle certainly contributes to pair bonding, though there many well-known situations where species pair-bond for live while retaining an annual/season oestrus.
Human menstruation is an outcome of a short oestrus cycle. There are many other factors involved, but this is a simple way of viewing it.
It may also be worth pointing out that menses are closely tied to body weight and fat. Insufficient body weight or fat can easily result in amenorrhoea.
TL;DR: Do women have monthly menses in order to prepare them for other gross things? No.
I think that I understand the OP’s question, so I’ll say “no, not in the sense you mean.”
For most species, the oestrus cycle is closely linked to seasonal variations in the food supply,temperature, migration patterns, and other external factors. In humans, these are relatively less important when a reliable food source is available. Once humans began engaging in agriculture and domesticating livestock, the seasonal variations became much less important. Pair bonding, due to the exceptionally long period required to raise a child, increased in importance. A shorter oestrus cycle certainly contributes to pair bonding, though there many well-known situations where species pair-bond for life while retaining an annual/season oestrus.
Human menstruation is an outcome of a short oestrus cycle. There are many other factors involved, but this is a simple way of viewing it.
It may also be worth pointing out that menses are closely tied to body weight and fat. Insufficient body weight or fat can easily result in amenorrhoea.
TL;DR: Do women have monthly menses in order to prepare them for other gross things? No.
It doesn’t line up with the lunar month. The average menstrual cycle is about a month long, but that varies considerably from person to person and can vary even for the same woman at different times. Anecdotally I’d say there doesn’t seem to be any connection between the phases of the moon and when a woman is menstruating, and I went to an all-female college where friends would mention being on the rag pretty casually. When Uncle Cecil covered this topic a number of years back it sounded like there was at best limited evidence suggesting a correlation for some women:
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I don’t necessarily agree with him, but I don’t think he meant that all women menstruate in unison or that the moon in some way controls menstruation. I read it as just him finding it interesting that the average menstrual cycle is approximately the same length as the lunar month, and pondering whether that fact may have been useful to some women in tracking their cycle.
Yes, I got that HMS Irruncible believes there’s some significance to the human menstrual cycle being roughly the same length as the lunar month. But as the Straight Dope column I linked to says (quoting astronomer George O. Abell) “The moon’s cycle of phases is 29.53 days, while the human female menstrual cycle averages 28 days (although it varies among women and from time to time with individual women); this is hardly even a good coincidence!”
Google tells me the average *range *for adult women’s menstrual cycles is 21-35 days, and for teenagers is 21-45 days (womenshealth.gov). There presumably are some women whose cycle is typically 29 days-and-change, but even they’d have to be pretty regular for the phases of the moon to be helpful in tracking their cycle in the long term.
Why would it be more of a “prepare to deal with gross things!” than just an obvious indicator of fertility? If it has a purpose at all, that seems to me to be the best one.
The actual “bleeding” part is just getting rid of waste products. Menstruation is no more meant to say “hey, I’m fertile!” than pooping is meant to say “hey, get ready for anal!”.
Can I reverse the OP? Has a social purpose been constructed from menstruation? I’m thinking of the menstrual huts of certain cultures, for instance, which must allow women man-free time to talk, work, etc.
Do you understand the purpose of menstruation? Humans aren’t biologically wired to have anal sex, so I don’t see how this analogy makes sense in your mind.
Bleeding monthly means you have a uterus that prepares itself on a regular cycle to have a pregnancy. While pregnant your cycle is suspended until you give birth. Breastfeeding said infant sometimes prevents you from becoming pregnant again. ( Don’t count on that though, I have one grandson who challenged that rule).