I
visited my son in hospital at the weekend. He'd broken his ankle and was being very well looked after in one of Melbourne's great hospitals. The hospital was chock-a-block, but not from snowfield misadventures, as I initially thought. My son's room was next to the maternity ward, and business was booming.
''What do you mean?'' says Louise. Well, they were lining up in the corridors and if there had been any more, they would have had to have been born in a taxi.
I started to wonder what's caused all this. I know the story of the power failure in New York that caused a boom in births nine months later and so I started to think back to the events here some nine or 10 months ago. Snap: the election of the Abbott government.
Louise fires up: ''Well I told you we'd all be …''
'' … rising with confidence'' quickly interjects Charlie, whose been telling us for a while that consumer confidence jumped two points straight after the election. And that's not all. The percentage of expecting mothers also jumped from 0.9 per cent to 1.4 per cent.
Prime ministers like to take credit for many things but perhaps the PM's generous paid parental leave policy was a bigger stimulus than many realised at the time.
Whatever the possible reasons, Australia is setting new records for the number of babies born per year, with NSW, Victoria and Western Australia having record numbers of births. The major reason for the change, however, is the increasing levels of migration. This current rush has also pushed against the seasonal trends. Over the past 10 years, the general pattern has been that births peak around March, and Charlie, who's always searching for the underlying factors that drive things along, looks back nine months to when weather starts to get cold and sales of wood heaters go up. He warns families against buying too many wood heaters, lest they end up with an unexpected, but much loved, child.
And of course we have all noticed that there's now a trend towards older motherhood. The median age of mothers in 2001 was 30 years but by 2011 it had risen to 30.6. And what's even more interesting is that in 2010 the number of births by women in the 40-plus bracket exceeded that of 15- to 19-year-old women. This is almost certainly due to young women being better educated in all things, including contraception. Teenage mothers have been steadily declining since the peaks achieved in the late 1960s.
Our current birth rate increase is good news for the nation and while there is no hard evidence that John Howard's baby bonus caused increased baby making, it's a fair bet that Tony Abbott's paid parental leave is going to give young couples extra confidence to make what many would say is the biggest commitment of our lives, and probably the most expensive.
New mothers have to consider many things, and one of the first issues to be resolved is a name. And, like everything, they go in cycles - century cycles, it seems. In 1910, William was the second most popular name and 100 years later, it was back at No.2. Ruby was a popular girl's name at the beginning of the 20th century and declined mid century but by last year was back in the top 10. Charlie's been exploring any name preference connections with popular prime ministers only to find Anthony (Tony) currently ranks 99 in the top 100, but it might be in there with a bullet. And, ominously, Joseph (Joe) is higher at 57. And those holding out hope for the opposition point out that William (Bill) is in second spot.
But hats off to all our modern young mums. It's just so important that we continue to replace each and every generation with a bigger and smarter one and that looks to be just what's happening. And migration is the key. By the way, for those of us in the media business, Lachlan has jumped two spots into the top 10 in eighth position and James is in sixth place.
And for those that are worried about immigration, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison doesn't even make the top 100.
