baby hunger (noun)
meaning the strong desire, particularly amongst older, professional women, to have a baby
baby-hungry (adjective)
'Male baby hunger is not as great as women 's - few have to make such a stark choice between reproduction and professional success. Baby peckishness, perhaps. '
(The Observer, 28th April 2002)
Sylvia Ann Hewlett wrote a book in 2002 called Baby Hunger: The New Battle for Motherhood
In the book she comments on the factors surrounding delayed motherhood among career women. The book became the subject of many heated debates on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact she had to change the name of the book in The USA as women were 'up in arms' about it! Even some of the women featured in the book found the title offensive!
Uk women are clearly more robust and didn't object to the title . The controversy surrounding Baby Hunger has been a contributing factor in establishing the term baby hunger in its varying forms.......she's a baby hungry woman. The book features a cross section of women who are caught between a successful career and a burning desire to be a mother (baby hunger).
Not surprisingly, the connotations of the emotive 'baby hunger' depend on the sympathies of the user.
A headline in The Observer on 17th March 2002.... 'Women face the trap of baby hunger ' has an obvious pro-maternal emphasis.
Conversely a Guardian article only a few weeks later bore the headline: 'Why men shouldn 't get trapped by baby-hungry women '. In this particular article, baby hunger is used in the same context as so-called Woman Terror - the idea that many men are bulldozed into fatherhood by a woman 's 'need' to have children as soon as possible:
What is Woman Terror then?
Well that is the feeling described by ... Mr. X who "found himself a father and married in his 20s to a woman who ... was only interested in him because she was suffering from baby hunger ..."
18 June 06
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