JAPAN: Bucking the Baby Bust; Japan's birthrate is down, but older moms are on the rise.

Byline: Kay Itoi

After 12 years of marriage, Ikuko Osada had resigned herself to oblique but endless questions about when she was going to have a baby. Then, at the age of 40, she unexpectedly became pregnant, and gave birth to a boy, Keitaro, last March. "My world has completely changed," says the financial planner in Kawasaki, a Tokyo suburb. She now preaches the joys of raising a child to her childless girlfriends.

Many of her contemporaries don't need to be persuaded. Although Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, Japanese women in their late 30s and older are beginning to have more babies, despite their declining fertility. While the number of twentysomething moms dropped 21 percent from 679,000 in 1997 to 538,000 in 2003, the number of mothers 35 and over rose to 157,000, up 23 percent in six years. The average age at which a Tokyo woman has her first child is now 30--a full five years older than the U.S. average.

The days when a kid born to a mother 40 or older was dubbed a haji kakikko, or a shameful child, are over. With more Japanese women postponing marriage to pursue higher education and careers, many have no choice but to have kids later. Medical advances in infertility treatment help. And women's changing expectations play a big role. Older mothers came of age during the glorious, free-spending bubble period and are used to making their own choices.

Medically, "the right time" to give birth is before 35, when the ability to conceive declines and the rate of miscarriage rises. But today's older moms think they picked just the right time. "I couldn't possibly have had her 10 years ago," says Akiko Hirahara, a 36-year-old software engineer, who had a baby last year after she felt established enough at her job. Many career women find they have a new perspective on their former ...