And who better to set off the trend than Shobha De, who has been a consistent chronicler of life in India's First City. In the West it has been a phenomenon for some time, triggered by no less than touchy-feely Princess Diana. Among the many things written in praise of her after August 31 last year was this: unlike generations of royals before her, she raised her two sons with only two full-time nannies (Does it take an army? Or a village?).

Much has already been made of Madonna's new maternal-girl phase, especially of her choice of Cheltenham Ladies College as the school for Loudes. Perhaps the only three other star daughtersalmost as famous as Madonna's two-year-old are Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. If you don't know that they are Demi Moore's daughters by Bruce Willis, you're obviously not a scavenger of celebritydom like me.

Motherhood as a fashion statement has really arrived. The only thing that Middle America held in Hillary Clinton's favour before Monica Lewinsky happened was that she had found enough time in a busy legal career to raise a daughter. It is a different issue that Indira Gandhi, perhaps the most powerful prime minister India has seen, had two children in whose lives she was actively engaged. Or that Benazir Bhutto has had three, in between striking deals to siphon off state funds and running the country into bankruptcy.

Flashing the family has become a very '90s thing. Everyone wants to be seen doing it. In middle-class India, it was an idea whose time had come. If you're famous, there's a good chance your child will be famous too. Whether it is Sachin Tendulkar's daughter (first pictures of whom werebrought to you via a glossy proclaiming the feat in breathless prose) or Sushma Swaraj's daughter (whose TV viewing habits are now a matter of national debate), there's no escaping these star children.

There was a time when these kids would burst upon us only when they were fully grown, a la Sanjay Gandhi. Now they're everywhere, all the time. You only have to read Shobha De's semi-autobiography, Selective Memories, to see how far children have come. Being the crass gossip-devouring journalist that I am (and the kind De abhors), I went into the book looking for some dirt on the pretty old things of Mumbai. The kind of things that would make my hair stand on end, like Cameron Diaz's in There's Something About Mary.

What I got instead is one long spiel on her children: all six of them (his two and her four). Marvellous though they sound, I am afraid their growing pains pale in comparison to Sarika's expensive and expansive lingerie or even Jackie Shroff's short shorts. Instead of my jaw dropping at thesleazy goings-on of starry types, I consistently had to square my shoulders to weather some more children chatter. After which my advice to working mothers (now that I'm one myself) is that they should use their children as fashion accessories, like Bina Ramani and Nafisa Ali. Especially now that a beauty parlour for children of working mothers has opened in New Delhi -- ostensibly because such mums don't have enough time to clip their babies' nails and trim their hair. Never mind that generations of working women before us have been balancing the demands of home and the field without bursting arteries. Never mind also that our mothers brought us up by doing twice as much housework than we ever could. Just do as De does.