Mo’ Boom

So the sluggish economy sent the birth rate in the U.S. into a tailspin. Besides not buying homes or cars, people decided to put off having babies. According to a Pew Research Center survey, about 22 per cent of 18 to 34 year-olds surveyed said they postponed starting a family because of economic considerations.

And now what can we expect as the economy improves? That’s right – a baby boom. The children of baby boomers are going to be starting families in a big way, and it’s already being referred to as the “Echo Boom.” Personally, I prefer my own name for it – the Boom Boom. Not only does it have more alliteration, it also sounds vaguely like the name of a strip club (the Boom Boom Room?) with even more alliteration.

The typical American woman plans to have an average of 2.3 children. Don’t get me started on the .3 part of the equation because I have never been able to understand the existence of fractional children, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to know the explanation. What I do know is that the number of women entering their childbearing years is on the rise. They are between the ages of 20 and 35 and they want to have sex. More specifically, they want to have sex that leads to the birth of a child (they’re not just sex-crazed for crying out loud). Oh, and one more thing. They are our daughters.

When I say “our” I really mean “your” daughters, since I don’t have one, but the point is that there are a lot of baby boomers out there (78 million by most counts) and they have a lot of daughters. If only a quarter of them have 2.3 babies…..well, you can see where this is going. It may be time to buy stock in disposable diaper companies.

Personally, I couldn’t be happier that there is a new baby boom coming along. For one thing, it will give everyone a new generation to blame for being selfish/spoiled/self-centered/demeaning-adjective-of-your-choice. Secondly, we need more worker bees paying into the system so that Social Security remains solvent. If we scale back the child labor laws, we could have these babies working at the age of 10!

So I say bring on the Boom Boom.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.