Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 12, 1990 TAG: 9008080089
SECTION: PARENTS' GUIDE PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Sara Cox
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For a while, aerobics instructor Jade Daniels was hearing the "echo" almost every month in her class at the Roanoke 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 minibaby 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."
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."
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.
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.
by CNB