Quote - That's all part of our hard-wiring.  Men want to impregnate women who look like they can produce healthy offspring, so youth is the ideal.  Women have to bear the burden of birth and rearing, so they are looking for a man who has access to resources.  Of course, these subconscious trends often combine with other traits to produce the wide and kooky palette of human behavior.

Yes, I'd guess it's at least partly an outgrowth of human menopause.  (Most animals do not have menopause.  Some highly social animals like whales do, but most do not.)

Among chimps, older females are highly preferred to young ones, because they are just as fertile, if not more so, and have the expertise to be good mothers.  Males will ignore young females if an older one is around.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like if humans had that pattern. Imagine a world where Kate Upton can't get anyone to look at her, while males of all ages flock around Hillary Clinton.