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Currently, gravidity is back in trendy grace, but often at the expense of the traditional, luxurious confinement. The new attitude is one of aggressive athleticism. Long hours at the office is only one way to be belligerently preggers. Even new fashions help the mother-to-be (see box). Women run, scuba dive and fence, sometimes against the advice of their doctors, while carrying a child. One New York periodontist in her late 30s refused to stop riding with her local hunt club when she became pregnant. She merely traded in her form-fitting "hunting pink" jacket for a man's jacket to cover her swelling stomach, and continued to follow the hounds and, no doubt, perplex the fox.
Such furious activity helps distract prospective parents from one aspect of their condition: the expense. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, raising a child born in 1982 to the age of 18 will cost from $85,000 to $134,000 in an urban community. There are many additional options. Necessary living space may cost an initial $10,000 in the first year. Child care for a two-career family adds $6,000 to $10,000 a year, private school at least another $3,000 a year. State-college tuition in the year 2000 is projected at $30,000 for four years. The loss of the new mother's former salary for five years at home after the birth may easily amount to more than $60,000—given a $15,000 yearly income and 8% inflation.
Amanda ("Binky") Urban, 35, like many new mothers-to-be, will not sit home calculating her lost wages. Now more than four months pregnant, the vivacious and well-connected literary agent guides clients through the predatory shoals of New York publishing. Urban moved herself and writer-columnist Husband Ken Auletta, 39, to a larger and more expensive Manhattan apartment in preparation for the new child. The Aulettas exude a confident, plugged-in affluence. Theirs is a life many people would envy. Why would they turn it upside down for a newborn infant? Urban voices the generosity of many older, first-time parents about that twist of fate. Says she: "There is that old biological clock ticking away. At 35, it is sort of written in the skies. All the odds go from one digit to two digits. But also there is the embarrassment-of-riches syndrome. Not just financially, but emotionally. You have an overflow of love and money that you just want to share with another person."