“I love our fourth; he is my little angel,” she said, looking down into her $800 stroller. A mushy, not altogether unattractive toddler looked up at her.

In richest Manhattan, an alarming trend has risen from the primordial ooze that is hedge-fund money. This trend is flooding the chic nursery schools, clogging the fashionable secondary schools and sending many a billionaire from a sports car into a giant gas-guzzling Denali. Yes, the hot accessory of 2007 is children—but not just one or two. It seems that fashionable women in Manhattan just can’t stop popping them out. Jessica Seinfeld, Jennifer Creel and Nancy Jerecki have three. Brook De Campo just had her fourth. Marie Chantal and her sister, Pia Getty, have four. Tory Burch has six (from different marriages—even better). Ron Perelman has six (also from different marriages). Even Donald Trump, hardly on the cutting edge of fashion, has five.

Why are rich, fabulous people having so many children? The answer is complicated. One of the reasons is because, quite frankly, children are fun (I say this as the mother of one). And children are even more fun when you have a huge $20 million townhouse filled with staff who get up with the kids in the middle of the night. Increased prosperity equals more children.

The other reason is because children last a lot longer than Jay Mendel minks and Hermès Birkins. From Sandy Weill (and his hospital) to Donald Trump (and his giant buildings with his giant name emblazoned on them in giant bronze letters), or Nina Griscom’s shop or Tory Burch’s clothing line, today’s rich are obsessed with the idea of immortality in whatever shape that might take (bigger apartments, bigger cars, bigger summer houses, bigger private jets, pay-for-play philanthropy). As the English aristocracy has known for centuries, children are our only real way of perpetuating our names.

For the last 40 years, women who had children in their 30’s and 40’s were considered members of the ruling class—yuppies. These women were part of power couples with two incomes and two BMW’s to match. But more recently, many women in the ruling class stopped having jobs altogether. They just hop right out of school and into the maternity ward: Do not pass go, do not collect even one paycheck. And these women who never worked can start popping them out in their 20’s, which means that normal women can’t possibly catch up. Maybe in that way, these young never-working baby-poppers are really asserting their power against a world filled with Ivy-educated egg freezers.

Some illustrious folks grew up in big families. Our first president, George Washington, was one of at least six children; Thomas Jefferson was one of 10 children; and Marie Antoinette was one of 16 children. But life was different back then: Children were farmhands, smallpox and the bubonic plague wiped out four kids at a time, and life was cheaper. Kids didn’t need to have a Montessori pink tower from Kid-O-NY to the tune of $140; back then, kids just played out in the piles of cow-dung with rusty nails and corn husks.

Indeed, infant-mortality rates for the rich are microscopic. But the cost of raising these children is not. By far the largest expense for the young rich is nannies. High-end baby nurses now run in the neighborhood of $200 a day, and generally their employment tends to run from six weeks to a year. That’s $73,000 for a year of baby nursing. Multiply that by four for four kids and that’s $292,000, which means you’re going to have to clear a total of $500,000 before taxes just to afford babyhood. An even larger expense is room and board: Where are you going to put up that baby nurse? A maid’s room (which measures on average seven by 10 feet) is going to add between $100,000 and $700,000 to the cost of your apartment, maybe more. Of course, most nannies don’t like to live in, so often perks must be offered—everything from being driven home after work by the chauffeur to 401(k) contributions.

Then there’s clothing (the de rigueur Princess coat from Marie Chantal costs $304), children’s haircuts (the John Frieda of kids’ haircuts, Cozy’s Kuts, costs about $40 with tip), private school (topping out at $26,000 a year), tuition at Tony Ballet Academy East ($2,650 per semester) and tutoring (anywhere upward of $50 an hour)—and let’s not forget birthday parties ($895 for the least expensive Kidville N.Y. party). And that’s before trust-fund contributions. What, your kid doesn’t have a trust fund?

“More than three children is just showing off,” my socialite friend said. Months later, she was pregnant with her fourth child. This got me thinking about the worst possible explanation for this mini baby boom among the rich. Are people just having four or five children because they can? Because they feel that it shows their wealth and status? In a world where the young rich use their $13,000 Birkin bags as diaper bags, one has to wonder.

After all, two children can live comfortably in a six-room apartment (or even, gasp, a two-bedroom apartment), but four children—well, they’re going to need a five-bedroom apartment (a 10), and that’s going to run you upward of $5 million. And that’s for something on a side street. Even if you put two children in each room, you’re still going to need three bedrooms (or a seven), and there is no sizeable seven-room apartment in Manhattan for less than $2.3 million.

Another reason that people are having so many children is everybody’s favorite baby-making activity, in-vitro fertilization. Earlier this year Dr. Wapner, the director of maternal and fetal medicine at Columbia, told The New York Times: “The incidence of twins since 1980 has increased by 50 percent and triplets by 400 percent.” Wow, that’s a lot of preschool spots.

But I believe (subscribing to the maxim that the rich are just like us, but with more money) that there is more to this boomlet than just showing off. Perhaps they are trying to keep their numbers up so their kids don’t have to venture to Second Avenue for a play date. Perhaps the loneliness and isolation of wealth in the face of global suffering is causing the baby blitz.

Maybe we should look to Hollywood to bridge the gap between helping the needy and having five children. A certain shrinking violet called Madonna has done something remarkable with her ability to procreate chicly with an eye toward global poverty. Yes, adoption is a good way to acquire all those status kiddies while still being able to help the poor. But how are you going to get all those orphans into your Hybrid Prius?

“We need something for Aspen,” she said breathlessly, her Denali creating a sense of urgency.

“Of course,” said the salesgirl.

I looked at my son in his ancient Maclaren. Would he someday pay someone $300 an hour to complain about the fact that he wasn’t squired around in a car that gets 14 miles to the gallon? Would he someday chronicle his tragic childhood in a memoir titled We Didn’t Even Have a Driver?

I used to be considered a princess by my pals. I was mocked for my inability to ride a bus, chided for my helplessness with the subway, and generally made fun of for my public-transportation ineptitude. Alas, this is no longer the case. I am now a down-to-earth gal who bravely hails a taxi and jumps into it, while my other friends stand helplessly waiting for their drivers to pick them up.

When I was in third grade, I came home from my fancy private school one day (one which I will not name, because I hope to get my son in there) and told my mother that I wanted to grow up so that I could marry Donald Trump and go to school in a limousine. My mother was appalled. To her, a limousine was a bourgeois prison. My grandfather, communist hero Howard Fast, would never ride in a limousine—at least not until he moved to Greenwich and married someone younger than my father. We never went anywhere in a limousine, except of course to the airport, and that was different (after all, the airport was far away). In fact, the only person who ever rolled up to our townhouse in a limousine was Stephen King.

But I grew up during the 80’s in a different New York, a New York filled with muggers, rapists, preppy murders and squeegee men. Anyone remember squeegee men? New York City used to be a crappy city; you had to be a little bit insane to raise your children here. As kids, we were lectured endlessly about what to do “when” we got mugged. We were told to keep an extra $10 in our shoe so that “when” we got mugged, we could get a taxi home. Had we only had drivers, our mugging problems could have been solved.

Normal people didn’t raise their kids in the city. They went to clean, safe places, places like Westchester, Greenwich and Great Neck. Now they don’t. Now our New York City is a glorified suburb with endless Container Stores and Starbucks.

The older generation is still embarrassed by the idea of being chauffeured about. The rows and rows of black town cars idling outside of 730 and 740 Park Avenue are anonymous and even subtle. They are discreet little town cars, embarrassed by their own conspicuousness. They are eclipsed by a lone Denali.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg brags about taking the subway, as if it were a badge of honor to be a rich person on the No. 6 train. Perhaps part of Mayor Bloomberg’s Democrat self is still alive and well.

But being driven doesn’t embarrass the young rich; they consider it anything from a “necessary evil” to a “blissful luxury” to a “downright necessity.” We are, after all, the generation that produced Paris Hilton; modesty is not one of our virtues. And at 198.9 inches long and 5,310 pounds, modesty isn’t one of the Denali’s virtues, either. In some ways, the Denali is our generation’s car, the car of Republican rule, the car of melting polar ice caps, of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, of the rich getting richer and the poor buying houses with adjustable-rate mortgages and huge balloon payments. Perhaps we should just rename the Denali the Denial-ie.

Maybe I’m jealous—there were many times in the last three years when I longed for one of those Denalis to sweep by and pick me up. Remember such taxi nightmares as the great transit strike of ’05 or the blizzard of ’06 or the horrendous blackout of ’03?

One of the many good things about the Denali is that it’s an American-made car, a good ol’ GMC truck (well, half of G.M.’s 324,000 employees are in the U.S.; I’m sure the rest of them are in Holland or somewhere else with good socialized medicine). Another good thing about it is that it has 104.6 cubic feet of interior space and can seat eight adults—not that anyone would suffer such discomfort. Also, at just $50,490 for the least luxe Denali XL, you can afford to hire two or three extra bodyguards. What, you don’t have a bodyguard?

Now, don’t get me wrong; some of my best friends are driven around in Denalis (once the car of choice for rappers and drug dealers). All of them are normal, charming, wonderful, intelligent people. Some of these friends use their Denalis because they have more than three children, and normal wagons don’t really do more than two car seats. One of my best friends uses her husband’s Denali when he goes to work. She is able to get all her errands done in half the time she would otherwise need. Also, going out to dinner with our friends with drivers is always a treat because we can go anywhere. The city feels like a tiny village when you can go places easily.

That said, I remember going out to dinner with a famous actor and his wife who afterward told their driver to go on without them because they wanted to walk. That did seem a bit stupid, to have someone idling for you for three hours only to tell him to head home in an empty car. Of course, that is the irony of a car and driver: You are paying someone to waste time, to wait, to do nothing.

When pressed, my driven friends often confess it is the chilly weather that leads them to take the Denalis instead of hoofing it. I tell them that cabs have heat too, but I realize it’s not the same.

“We need something for Aspen,” she said breathlessly, her Denali creating a sense of urgency.

“Of course,” said the salesgirl.

I looked at my son in his ancient Maclaren. Would he someday pay someone $300 an hour to complain about the fact that he wasn’t squired around in a car that gets 14 miles to the gallon? Would he someday chronicle his tragic childhood in a memoir titled We Didn’t Even Have a Driver?

I used to be considered a princess by my pals. I was mocked for my inability to ride a bus, chided for my helplessness with the subway, and generally made fun of for my public-transportation ineptitude. Alas, this is no longer the case. I am now a down-to-earth gal who bravely hails a taxi and jumps into it, while my other friends stand helplessly waiting for their drivers to pick them up.

When I was in third grade, I came home from my fancy private school one day (one which I will not name, because I hope to get my son in there) and told my mother that I wanted to grow up so that I could marry Donald Trump and go to school in a limousine. My mother was appalled. To her, a limousine was a bourgeois prison. My grandfather, communist hero Howard Fast, would never ride in a limousine—at least not until he moved to Greenwich and married someone younger than my father. We never went anywhere in a limousine, except of course to the airport, and that was different (after all, the airport was far away). In fact, the only person who ever rolled up to our townhouse in a limousine was Stephen King.

But I grew up during the 80’s in a different New York, a New York filled with muggers, rapists, preppy murders and squeegee men. Anyone remember squeegee men? New York City used to be a crappy city; you had to be a little bit insane to raise your children here. As kids, we were lectured endlessly about what to do “when” we got mugged. We were told to keep an extra $10 in our shoe so that “when” we got mugged, we could get a taxi home. Had we only had drivers, our mugging problems could have been solved.

Normal people didn’t raise their kids in the city. They went to clean, safe places, places like Westchester, Greenwich and Great Neck. Now they don’t. Now our New York City is a glorified suburb with endless Container Stores and Starbucks.

The older generation is still embarrassed by the idea of being chauffeured about. The rows and rows of black town cars idling outside of 730 and 740 Park Avenue are anonymous and even subtle. They are discreet little town cars, embarrassed by their own conspicuousness. They are eclipsed by a lone Denali.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg brags about taking the subway, as if it were a badge of honor to be a rich person on the No. 6 train. Perhaps part of Mayor Bloomberg’s Democrat self is still alive and well.

But being driven doesn’t embarrass the young rich; they consider it anything from a “necessary evil” to a “blissful luxury” to a “downright necessity.” We are, after all, the generation that produced Paris Hilton; modesty is not one of our virtues. And at 198.9 inches long and 5,310 pounds, modesty isn’t one of the Denali’s virtues, either. In some ways, the Denali is our generation’s car, the car of Republican rule, the car of melting polar ice caps, of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, of the rich getting richer and the poor buying houses with adjustable-rate mortgages and huge balloon payments. Perhaps we should just rename the Denali the Denial-ie.

Maybe I’m jealous—there were many times in the last three years when I longed for one of those Denalis to sweep by and pick me up. Remember such taxi nightmares as the great transit strike of ’05 or the blizzard of ’06 or the horrendous blackout of ’03?

One of the many good things about the Denali is that it’s an American-made car, a good ol’ GMC truck (well, half of G.M.’s 324,000 employees are in the U.S.; I’m sure the rest of them are in Holland or somewhere else with good socialized medicine). Another good thing about it is that it has 104.6 cubic feet of interior space and can seat eight adults—not that anyone would suffer such discomfort. Also, at just $50,490 for the least luxe Denali XL, you can afford to hire two or three extra bodyguards. What, you don’t have a bodyguard?

Now, don’t get me wrong; some of my best friends are driven around in Denalis (once the car of choice for rappers and drug dealers). All of them are normal, charming, wonderful, intelligent people. Some of these friends use their Denalis because they have more than three children, and normal wagons don’t really do more than two car seats. One of my best friends uses her husband’s Denali when he goes to work. She is able to get all her errands done in half the time she would otherwise need. Also, going out to dinner with our friends with drivers is always a treat because we can go anywhere. The city feels like a tiny village when you can go places easily.

That said, I remember going out to dinner with a famous actor and his wife who afterward told their driver to go on without them because they wanted to walk. That did seem a bit stupid, to have someone idling for you for three hours only to tell him to head home in an empty car. Of course, that is the irony of a car and driver: You are paying someone to waste time, to wait, to do nothing.

When pressed, my driven friends often confess it is the chilly weather that leads them to take the Denalis instead of hoofing it. I tell them that cabs have heat too, but I realize it’s not the same.

And the only thing worse than being a handbag whore is being a handbag whore in a world where there is no “It” bag.

To be an “It” bag, a bag must provoke the following in otherwise-normal handbag whores: 1) a propensity for cheerfully sitting on waiting lists; 2) hours spent trolling eBay hoping to find said bag for up to three times the retail price; and 3) begging publicists just for the chance to pay full price for the bag in question.

Tragically, this summer has been a long, cold “It”-bag-less summer. The optimists will say this isn't true. They'll point to the new Mulberry Notting Hill Roxanne bag (too cheap at $1,045); the Fendi beggar bag (though expensive enough to be an “It” bag at $3,320, it seems to me to be far too fleshy and flabby for “It” status); the sloppy, heavy Chloe homeless-but-really-I-live-in-Soho bag (which again is O.K., but it's been around nearly a year, so it's too old to be “It”).

What are the larger implications of this tragedy? Is the stock market about to plunge? Is this the beginning of the end?

Of course, my suggestion that the Upper East Side hasn't seen an “It” bag since last year's Chanel quilted Madonna bag was met with the staunchest denials at one high-end Fifth Avenue retail mecca. Like the boy whistling in the dark to keep himself from the inevitable panic attack, my fashionable gray-haired saleswoman insisted that the absence of an “It” bag was merely just journalistic wishful thinking.

"This season, there's a ton of cool bags,” she said. “My most favorite is this Gucci bag.” She smiled with a mouthful of alarmingly sharp teeth as she stroked the scary animal-looking skin of a Gucci medium shoulder bag in almond-colored python. “Look at this workmanship, the craftsmanship. Why, this seems almost handmade.”

Seems being the operative word. I journalistically looked at the price tag—slightly more than two grand. “But this isn't an ‘It' bag,” I said. “I've never seen anyone except some wind-blown wrinklies in Palm Beach carrying this sucker.” For a minute, we looked at each other—she a luscious, Botoxed and cellulite-free 47, I a pudgy and dimwitted 26. She realized that I was nothing more than a cheap harlot looking for a gossip fix. I had no bank, no bling, no black American Express and no reason to live.

But she was wrong; I have rich parents (though by Upper East Side standards they are nearly homeless). I can remember back as long ago as 1997 (a banner year for me, as I spent much of it in rehab). That year brought the Gucci hobo, lean and mean and very uncomfortable because of its bamboo handle. The following year ushered in the Fendi baguette (small and expensive, like a Miller sister), and the year after that was the year of the Prada nylon in fruity colors (a floopy mess of a bag that was way too easily copied). The golden years of 2000 through 2004 saw, in rapid succession, the Kate Spade nylon zip-top tote, the square $1,200 Tod's tote, the Marc Jacobs no-pocket hard-frame round bag, the Jimmy Choo hobo, the Luella Birkin style tote, the Chanel Madonna bag, the Marc Jacobs five-pocket hobo, the Balenciaga homeless-woman tote (made fashionable by my favorite New Yorkers, Mary-Kate and Ashley) and the Hogan tote.

Sitting outside J.G. Melon's on Third Avenue and 74th Street, I am dismayed. A woman passes carrying one of this season's pointy Tod's bags, which is nice but lacks a celebrity following or an influential fashion editor pushing it over the top. I'm carrying last year's Mary-Kate Balenciaga in green in a slightly smaller size (it's dirty and grungy and makes me want to weep into my salad). Its best quality is that its price won't show up on my credit-card bill because my mom bought it for me. There is no joy on Third Avenue! I feel it, or the lack of an “It,” as the case may be; the haggard soccer mom lugging a beat-up camel-colored Chanel feels it, too.

At the Bergdorf Goodman handbag sale, no fights break out. A year ago, Scoop on Third Avenue was unable to keep Marc Jacobs bags in stock, but now the store runneth over with Marc Jacobs. And by far the most distressing economic indicator—even worse than the absence of an “It” bag—is that the usually aloof salespeople at Scoop seem vaguely interested in my business.

Is it possible that, sometime in the future, apartments won't be a million dollars a bedroom? Is it conceivable that people might stop spending $5 on a cup of burnt coffee made by a surly teen in a green smock? Is it perhaps in the cards that one day soon, frugality will be more impressive than a fleet of $250,000 Maybachs, all of them driven by Yale-educated drivers? Will the Target credit card replace the American Express black card as the card of choice among the East Hampton set? Will frugality become our new “It” baggage, or will my shrink come back in September from Southampton (south of the highway, of course) and put me back on my medication?

And the only thing worse than being a handbag whore is being a handbag whore in a world where there is no "It" bag.

To be an "It" bag, a bag must provoke the following in otherwise-normal handbag whores: 1) a propensity for cheerfully sitting on waiting lists; 2) hours spent trolling eBay hoping to find said bag for up to three times the retail price; and 3) begging publicists just for the chance to pay full price for the bag in question.

Tragically, this summer has been a long, cold "It"-bag-less summer. The optimists will say this isn't true. They'll point to the new Mulberry Notting Hill Roxanne bag (too cheap at $1,045); the Fendi beggar bag (though expensive enough to be an "It" bag at $3,320, it seems to me to be far too fleshy and flabby for "It" status); the sloppy, heavy Chloe homeless-but-really-I-live-in-Soho bag (which again is O.K., but it's been around nearly a year, so it's too old to be "It").

What are the larger implications of this tragedy? Is the stock market about to plunge? Is this the beginning of the end?

Of course, my suggestion that the Upper East Side hasn't seen an "It" bag since last year's Chanel quilted Madonna bag was met with the staunchest denials at one high-end Fifth Avenue retail mecca. Like the boy whistling in the dark to keep himself from the inevitable panic attack, my fashionable gray-haired saleswoman insisted that the absence of an "It" bag was merely just journalistic wishful thinking.

"This season, there's a ton of cool bags," she said. "My most favorite is this Gucci bag." She smiled with a mouthful of alarmingly sharp teeth as she stroked the scary animal-looking skin of a Gucci medium shoulder bag in almond-colored python. "Look at this workmanship, the craftsmanship. Why, this seems almost handmade."

Seems being the operative word. I journalistically looked at the price tag-slightly more than two grand. "But this isn't an 'It' bag," I said. "I've never seen anyone except some wind-blown wrinklies in Palm Beach carrying this sucker." For a minute, we looked at each other-she a luscious, Botoxed and cellulite-free 47, I a pudgy and dimwitted 26. She realized that I was nothing more than a cheap harlot looking for a gossip fix. I had no bank, no bling, no black American Express and no reason to live.

But she was wrong; I have rich parents (though by Upper East Side standards they are nearly homeless). I can remember back as long ago as 1997 (a banner year for me, as I spent much of it in rehab). That year brought the Gucci hobo, lean and mean and very uncomfortable because of its bamboo handle. The following year ushered in the Fendi baguette (small and expensive, like a Miller sister), and the year after that was the year of the Prada nylon in fruity colors (a floopy mess of a bag that was way too easily copied). The golden years of 2000 through 2004 saw, in rapid succession, the Kate Spade nylon zip-top tote, the square $1,200 Tod's tote, the Marc Jacobs no-pocket hard-frame round bag, the Jimmy Choo hobo, the Luella Birkin style tote, the Chanel Madonna bag, the Marc Jacobs five-pocket hobo, the Balenciaga homeless-woman tote (made fashionable by my favorite New Yorkers, Mary-Kate and Ashley) and the Hogan tote.

Sitting outside J.G. Melon's on Third Avenue and 74th Street, I am dismayed. A woman passes carrying one of this season's pointy Tod's bags, which is nice but lacks a celebrity following or an influential fashion editor pushing it over the top. I'm carrying last year's Mary-Kate Balenciaga in green in a slightly smaller size (it's dirty and grungy and makes me want to weep into my salad). Its best quality is that its price won't show up on my credit-card bill because my mom bought it for me. There is no joy on Third Avenue! I feel it, or the lack of an "It," as the case may be; the haggard soccer mom lugging a beat-up camel-colored Chanel feels it, too.

At the Bergdorf Goodman handbag sale, no fights break out. A year ago, Scoop on Third Avenue was unable to keep Marc Jacobs bags in stock, but now the store runneth over with Marc Jacobs. And by far the most distressing economic indicator-even worse than the absence of an "It" bag-is that the usually aloof salespeople at Scoop seem vaguely interested in my business.

Is it possible that, sometime in the future, apartments won't be a million dollars a bedroom? Is it conceivable that people might stop spending $5 on a cup of burnt coffee made by a surly teen in a green smock? Is it perhaps in the cards that one day soon, frugality will be more impressive than a fleet of $250,000 Maybachs, all of them driven by Yale-educated drivers? Will the Target credit card replace the American Express black card as the card of choice among the East Hampton set? Will frugality become our new "It" baggage, or will my shrink come back in September from Southampton (south of the highway, of course) and put me back on my medication?