Behavior: The Dilemmas of Childlessness

Careers and indecision are leading many to bypass parenthood

Babies seem to be everywhere these days. Current movie fare offers Three Men and a Baby, Baby Boom and She's Having a Baby. Even television commercials are using giggling, gurgling newborns to shill for grownup products such as carpets, insurance and automobile tires. Yet despite the highly visible new crop of infants, not all Americans are sure they want to help fuel the baby mania. Observes UCLA Psychologist Jacqueline Goodchilds: "Many people are questioning the assumption that fulfillment for a woman is having children."

By and large, the baby busters are female college graduates of the late '60s and early '70s...

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