They spend their time packing junk food-free lunch boxes instead of Vuitton briefcases. They've traded courtroom skirmishes for PTA dustups. And only once in a while do they think about whether their Ivy League degrees prepared them for their current job as minivan chauffeur.

Welcome to the lush, lavish suburbs of the Peninsula, where a baby boom among well-to-do women is giving rise to the moniker Woodside Four—named after women who love motherhood so much they have not two, not three, but four kids. Having escaped cramped, child-unfriendly San Francisco, where schools are shuttering and backyards are as teeny as a $500,000 condo, these women traded up with bigger homes, husbands with bigger paychecks, and, of course, bigger families. And before you hurl a barrage of Stepford comments their way, consider this: while many wealthy city women prefer to indulge in the three Cs—clothing, careers, and cosmetic surgery—Woodside, Los Altos, and Atherton moms are only OD'ing on children.

"My standing joke is that if it was the 1950s, I'd have eight kids," says Woodside PTA president Liz Dressel, a mother of four girls ages three to ten....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family

1. CharlesB wrote: I think this is wonderful news.  Nothing brings a person back to church like having a child.  Hey, if we keep this up, maybe we can out-breed the Muslims?  Nah.  No way.  Thye can work with multiple wives. September 5, 4:37 am | [comment link]

2. Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) wrote: This is one reason the USA is the only western industrialised nation not already moribund (a biological term describing populations producing insufficient young to maintain themselves). While nations like Italy and Spain are on a trajectory to see their populations halved by mid-century, the USA is on-target for 400 million. September 5, 6:39 am | [comment link]

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