Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 7, 1990 TAG: 9005050343
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
For a while, aerobics instructor Jade Daniels was hearing The Echo almost every month in her class at the YMCA - so often that she jokingly proposed having the water checked.
One by one, the regulars came to the sessions and announced they were pregnant. As soon as one would deliver and eventually return to class, another would take a maternal leave of absence.
"If I had to tell you all the people I've known who've had babies in the past three years, I couldn't remember all of them," says Donna Williams, a 29-year-old tax accountant, mother of one, and faithful aerobicizer.
Williams and her classmates are taking the lead where vanguard baby boomers are concerned, and it's not because they do aerobics on their lunch hour or drive imported cars.
They're having babies.
After working on their careers for five to 15 years. And well after they've married, bought houses and become financially secure.
Sound familiar? Hear an echo? That's the baby boom Echo, the term demographers use to describe the mini-baby booms that occur when baby boomers have babies themselves.
In Virginia, the Echo began in 1977, and births have been steadily increasing ever since, even outpacing births at the national level, according to the University of Virginia's Center for Public Service.
As Michael Spar, a demographer at the center puts it, "The baby boomers are getting into their peak reproductive years, and they're having beaucoup kids."
For Virginia, the Echo means officials will need to pay greater attention to issues such as education and day care, according to Marvin Pippert, a Roanoke College professor and demographer.
"They had a conference in Roanoke recently for corporations who were interested in setting up on-site day-care facilities," Pippert says. "And I understand it was pretty sparsely attended.
"If indeed a boom does hit the area, things like day care and hiring more school teachers will be very crucial."
How loud is the Echo in the Roanoke Valley - an area where growth has been slow but stable, and where the elderly make up 21 percent of the population?
The question was posed to a few experts here - health-care administrators, demographers, entrepreneurs and mothers: Is Roanoke experiencing a baby boom or a birth dearth?
It seemed like a simple enough question. But the answer proved to be anything but - and an issue of surprisingly hot debate.
The health department doesn't have statistics more current than 1988, but figures from area hospitals show a slight increase in births since 1988. So while the Echo may be a factor in terms of demographics, it may not necessarily mean a full-fledged mini-boom. However:
At Roanoke Memorial Hospital, births are up by nearly 100 in the past six months, compared to the same time period last year.
Lewis-Gale Hospital reports a 9 percent increase in births from 1987 to 1989, but only a slight increase in the first three months of this year.
Numbers are down 14 percent at Community Hospital so far this year, compared to this time last year. But director for maternal child nursing Josephine Currie reports that births are expected to soar this summer, particularly in June and July. Why so many babies due this summer?
"You just look back on your calendar nine months and see what was happening," Currie says.
And you see that Hurricane Hugo was all over the Southeast news, as were flood warnings, power outages and travel advisories.
What else were Roanokers to do?
And then there are people like Kathy Cox, a 30-year-old systems analyst whose second child is due in early July.
"I have no excuse," she says, laughing. "We were in Florida at the time, and the weather was great."
So the numbers are only marginally up. Maybe there isn't a Roanoke baby boom. Area health-care providers interviewed weren't really sure.
But some doctors, like OB/GYN Steven Farber, have been swamped with new customers. "It is sort of the last chance for the baby boomers; the biological clock is ticking."
Farber was hesitant to surmise that the Echo was solely responsible for his recent surge in business. Another possible factor, he says, is that family practitioners in the valley's outlying areas have given up delivering babies because of malpractice and liability threats.
That could mean that more babies are being born in the Roanoke Valley, but not necessarily being reared here.
And then there are doctors like Robert Irvin, head of Roanoke Memorial's OB/GYN clinic for low-income or high-risk pregnancies. Irvin has seen a tremendous increase in births at the clinic, but only among the teen-age population, and particularly among younger teens in the 13-14 age group.
Planned Parenthood's Kathy Haynie confirms that trend. Talk of a baby boom was rampant during a recent Southeastern U.S. family planning conference she attended.
But Haynie points out that 40 to 50 percent of all pregnancies still are unintended. And the teen pregnancy rate is going up, partly because there is a greater population of women who are childbearing age.
"Girls are becoming fertile younger; we have young women who are menstruating at age 10 . . . And people are sexually active earlier," says Haynie.
"Still, women are marrying much later, so there's a much larger period of time when they're at risk of unintended pregnancy."
Barbara Parker, director of the division of family planning for the Virginia Department of Health, predicts the state's teen pregnancy rate will continue to climb in the next few years, partly because more girls will be entering their teens (remember, The Echo began 13 years ago).
The teen pregnancy rate, Parker explains, had been decreasing until 1988, when there was a sharp increase - from 83 pregnancies per 1,000 teens in 1987 to 87 per 1,000 in 1988.
While she concedes that a baby boom Echo is occuring, it is only a trend among the well-educated, she says. A larger increase in births has occurred among poor teen-agers.
So where does this leave the women in Daniels' aerobics class? Trendsetters or not?
And what about the baby business - which, if nothing else, does seem to be booming?
The Baby Superstore, a chain of 26 stores based in Greenville, S.C., opened up shop at Crossroards Mall last December. And according to Linda McAvoy, assistant to the president of Babysuper, that act alone signals high hopes for the Roanoke baby market.
Before opening, the store's corporate officials had conducted extensive research on the possibilities of doing big business here, and Roanoke came out in good stead: Compared in a group of 50 similar-sized cities, the valley placed in the top half in terms of growth rate, birth rate and child population, McAvoy says.
And the article that appeared in the March issue of Parenting Magazine, touting Roanoke as one of the 10 best cities in America in which to raise a family, couldn't help but foster the notion that Roanoke is Kid City.
At The Baby Store in Oak Grove Plaza, owner Jim Myers reports that business is steady, but stops one step short of predicting a regional boom.
Explaining why women like those in Daniels' aerobics class are convinced a boom is occurring, he says: "You never notice someone being pregnant until you are. Like with our store, we've been here nine years, and people come in all the time and say, `I never knew you were here before.' Well, they never had a need before.
"It's like an auto parts store; you never know it's there till you need a spark plug or something."
by CNB