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The fervency of that desire is becoming the common prayer of the 1980s. Indeed, the U.S. birth rate is the highest it has been in more than a decade. After dropping as low as 14.5 (babies per 1,000 population), the rate climbed to 16.2 in 1980 and is expected to hit 17.1 this year. Such a rise is more than just a blip on the demography charts. It has portentous overtones. Although three-quarters of all babies continue to be borne by women in the 18-to-30 age group, there has been an astonishing 15.2% rise in the birth rate of women who were once thought to be slightly beyond their child-bearing years: the 30-to 44-year-olds.
Why are so many women pregnant? Is it some side effect of jogging? Microwave ovens? One of the answers is demography. The 37 million-strong cohort of baby boom women is now 25 to 35 years old. As a group, these women marry later than their mothers and delay having children until their education is completed and their careers are established. Many are giving birth to long-postponed babies.
But sheer numbers hardly explain this flowering of fecundity. For many women, the biological clock of fertility is running near its end. Menopause will strike at midnight. The ancient Pleistocene call of the moon, of salt in the blood, and genetic encoding buried deep in the chromosomes back there beneath the layers of culture—and counterculture—are making successful businesswomen, professionals and even the mothers of grown children stop and reconsider. Says Pulitzer-prizewinning Boston Globe Columnist Ellen Goodman: "You find women who have believed work is the end-all and beall. But after eight years, they say, just like the housewives, 'Is this all there is?' " Washington Child Psychologist Carlotta Miles sees the shift toward mature motherhood as a very positive step. Says she: "Women no longer think that in order to be equal they have to take something fundamental away from themselves. The something turned out to be having a family."
More and more career women are deciding it is just that. They are choosing pregnancy before the clock strikes 12. Says Writer Nora Ephron, 40, who had her first child in 1978: "Just once in my life I would like to do something that everyone else isn't doing, but that seems not to be my destiny."
The most famous example of the trend Ephron laments is not even an American one. THE HEIR IS BECOMING APPARENT, punned a tabloid headline about Prince Charles' wife Diana. Other headlines read: NAPPY HOLIDAY and BACK WITH A BUMP. The blooming princess attended a dinner two weeks ago after a respite from public appearances. Her condition, pending delivery, has resulted in hundreds of gifts—from Teddy bears to a minithrone.
Closer to home, America's own version of regnancy—the goddesses of film and tube—has produced a plethora of pregnancies. Currently expecting: Jill Clayburgh, 37; Sissy Spacek, 32; Mimi Kennedy, 33; Blair Brown, 32; Donna Summer, 33. Another group of ripening screen beauties have only recently had their first babies. Among them: Ursula Andress, 45; Faye Dunaway, 41; Jane Seymour, 31.