The Post-Boom Baby Boom
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All of a sudden I have tons of friends who are having babies. Both my sister and my cousin are expecting. Buddies from college and even high school are now recent parents. What the heck is going on? I never used to have to send out so many "Congratulations, it's a ___" cards in my life, and I'm 33. Perhaps I should just buy a set of those cards in bulk from CostCo and get it over with.

The last time we had a baby boom it was after the allies won World War II. There was a lot to celebrate as the world became a safer place and we saw double digit economic growth from the mid-forties far into the sixties. It was a good time to have a lot of babies: the bad guys were vanquished and there cupboard was stocked to the gills.

Well whatever allies there now, are not winning much. Saddam is out of power but Iraq is a mess, Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden is still running wild. The War on Terror is far from finished. The economy has gone thorough a nasty recession. Recovery is in sight, but it will be jobless. It might not seem like a good time to have babies: the bad guys are still out there and the cupboard is looking bare.

So why in tarnation are people having babies now? Perhaps in the throws of the recession staying at home became a better idea for young couples. No more expensive dinners, night clubbing, traveling abroad. Now the sound of "kicking back, watching a movie with a bottle of "Two Buck Chuck" (that $2.00 bottle of wine you get from Trader Joe's) and thou" is not such a bad idea. We all know where evengings like that lead...

Perhaps, much like capital spending for a business (i.e.: you need to buy that new delivery truck eventually), young couples can only put off making babies for so long (i.e.: many people get married to have kids). During the Boom, young couples spent so much time on their careers and putting off having kids, that they cannot wait any longer.

Some people reason that there is something a little deeper going on that . The logic says that perhaps since people aren't working quite so much, not throwing so much energy into their careers, that they are more family focused. Perhaps, but the people I know who still have a job are working twice as hard just to keep that job. And those without jobs, who haven't given up yet, are working even harder to find one.

One cannot ignore the impact of disaster of 9/11. After watching that horrifying footage, how can anyone not stop and think about their life? Church attendance briefly skyrocketed, people brought loved ones closer, suddenly being parted from your loved ones to work didn't sound like a good idea. There was a mass ethical about face in the industrialized nations, especially in the USA. People went from a material driven lifestyle to more emotional (for lack of a better word) driven orientation.

Or perhaps it is really on a level of something I, being a 33 year old single guy living in San Francisco, am just not tapped into. Perhaps I have to be involved in a committed relationship / married to understand this. All I know is that as of now, I am now the only person in my family who is not a parent except those of us that are under 11 years old.

Whatever the reason, or list of reasons, a small Baby Boom has snuck up on us. Nobody really knows why. Perhaps it's just time for it. Buy stock in baby product oriented comapnies. They will do well.