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The townhouse my daughter and son-in-law live in has huge windows—and there are many of them. Nestled close to the American capital, this idyllic piece of North Virginia has a wide variety of residents perpetually bustling by.

So, naturally, people-watching has become a bit of a habit for me in my present state: I am a debuting grandmother. And when not occupied with grandmotherly pleasures I have my nose pressed to the glass.

Jogging is national pastime: there are frequent traffic jams on the pavements. But what I saw the other day had me rubbing my eyes in disbelief. Two women in their 30s were running down the pavement, each of them pushing a stroller with a baby in it. In Americanese what they were doing is “strollercising”.

This new addition to the American lexicon describes a fairly new two-in-one activity: pushing a stroller and exercising. These new rugged, high-end and lightweight strollers are obscenely expensive. As, indeed, is everything to do with babies today.

The Rolls Royce of strollers is The Silver Cross Balmoral. Imported from England it can lighten the wallet by as much as $3,000. It became a hot item across the Atlantic when photographs of Gwyneth Paltrow and Catherine Zeta Jones using them were published in magazines.

A website that specialises in the high-end baby market, offers wrought-iron Corsican cribs that cost $1,000 or more. And tons of fancy made-in-Italy cribs are being shipped from Europe to American parents who want the best that money can buy for their offspring: Bellini sells crib (cot) sets from Italian designer Picci for as much as $1,500.

Move over trophy wives, it’s time for trophy babies, dolled up in designer wear and rolling in on branded wheels and weaned on organic baby food. From being competitive in careers to being competitive in parenthood is increasingly a small step. Ergo, you are known by the children you keep.

America, it seems, is going nuts—about babies. The baby products industry is booming: the global market for infant and toddler products has grown 10 per cent in three years to $40 billion, according to the London-based consulting firm Planet Retail. But it’s not only the rich who are responsible for boosting the sales of products for babies and toddlers. Middle class parents, as well as grandparents, are rapidly becoming the new big spenders.

In his customary New Year’s letter to friends and family recounting how he had spent the previous year a financial analyst jokingly advised them to invest in companies making products for babies, but it was only half in jest.

In his epistle he writes: “If you think a baby boom is going on, it’s not your imagination—it’s the grandchildren of the Baby Boom generation, or the “Echo Boom Squared”. Wal-Mart, the largest chain of shops in the US even has an online baby gift registry.

Parents are also having their babies later, when they are far more affluent. Social aspirations have kicked in even more aggressively by then and parents want their children to go to the heaven of the arrived: Harvard.

Baby Einstein educational toys, CD’s of classical music (Mozart sends the IQ shooting upwards) with subliminal messages, and Gymni play mats made in Israel, Mozart tunes and flashing lights promise early enlightenment.

The baby mania has also been spurred by the baby boom among celebrities.Until a couple of years ago you rarely saw pregnant celebrities. Today, they are all over magazines, their pregnant tummies in full view if they are expecting, and airing their babies in designer strollers if they have already had theirs.

Brittany Spears, Posh Beckham, Gwenyth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner, Katie Holmes—they have all worn their pregnancies likebadges of courage, and occasionally like a fashion accessory. If you have it, flaunt it. The most exciting accessory, however, is the baby of colour—the exotic. An expectant Anjolina Jolie has often been photographed with the two children she adopted: one an Ethiopian, the other a Cambodian. Was she was taking her cue from Mia Farrow, Woody Allen’s former wife who adopted a Korean girl?

The current baby boom and the obsession show no signs of abating. Perhaps, it is, for some, a consequence of the tragedy of 9/11, when a pall of uncertainty settled over their universe and ignited in them a desire to nest. Certainly many American babies were conceived at the time of the Bay of Pigs incident when the US and the Soviet Union were on the brink of pressing their respective nuclear buttons. Whatever, for the present however, there seems to be no business like baby business.

Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com