But the isolation and condescension "nonworking" moms face in a career-woman's world ("Oh, you stay at home! And what else do you do?") can be especially hard on women who don't have a long list of work accomplishments behind them. And taking an early break is tougher in some fields than in others. For Susan Stevens, 30, a mother of three in Birmingham, Ala., plans to have children early meant deciding to become a teacher rather than a doctor. "I'd be 30 before I was finished with medical school," she says. (She ended up leaving teaching with the birth of her second child.) Former fashion designer Daisy von Furth, 33, of Northampton, Mass., dropped her X-Girl clothing line after having her son Wolfie when she was 26. Von Furth is enjoying stay-at-home motherhood but says going back into the fashion business probably wouldn't be an option, even if she wanted to. "You've jumped off the career train at a certain point," she says. "How can you come back at 36 or 37 and say, 'I'm here, guys — snap, snap, let me start another line of hip-hop clothing'?"

Some women, however, see a "baby sabbatical" as a chance to define what they want out of work, like Lu Dayment, 46, of Indianapolis, who had three kids in her 20s and at 35 went to graduate school in library science. "It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up," she says. Others take time off but maintain close connections to their former jobs, to ease their even-tual re-entry into the working world-or simply to avoid going insane after reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the 2,000th time. A former saleswoman in the distribution department at the movie studio DreamWorks, Gioconda Mitas, 31, was the first of her work friends to have a baby, three years ago. Once a week, she dresses up and drives from suburban Granada Hills, Calif., to have lunch with three former co-workers and pump them for office dirt. "What I miss most about working is the feeling that I have something that is mine-a desk, an area that belongs only to me ... I know I'm important in my son's life, but at DreamWorks I was also valued. I miss that."

RAVES TO RATTLES
In a society that fetishizes fun yet also equates career with identity, young moms are double outsiders. It can be isolating to feel your old cronies are living the Sex and the City life while you're stuck on Yes, Dear. But if their childless, swinging friends see them as old before their time, older moms-especially in communities where putting children on hold for career is common-can look down on younger women as babies with babies. Single mom Kim Howell, 25, of Oak Park, Ill., finds she can't go clubbing as often now that she has a three-year-old; her friends "can't understand that I can't stay out till 4 a.m. every Monday." Yet Howell, a restaurant server-manager, also has little in common with the older, upper-middle-class moms at her daughter's preschool. "Some of them look at me funny because I'm young," Howell says, "but it doesn't bother me. I'm proud of my daughter." And, she adds, "when my daughter is 18, I'll be only 40."

THE PAYOFF
Yet for all these costs, many of our young moms believe they did right by themselves and their children. Young parents, they say, have certain intangible advantages money can't buy. They have greater energy to keep up with young kids and can look forward to a longer empty-nest life. In addition to the reduced risk of running into fertility problems, some moms say they're glad they took the physical beating of pregnancy and labor while still in their more resilient 20s.

Babies cost you dearly, no doubt about it. And earlier in life is when you have the least, literally, to spend. But, as Jane Collyer notes, young mothers have more of one important asset in the bank: life itself. "You know what the best part is?" she asks. "I really hope I'll get to see my great-grandchildren. I don't want not to be able to lift [my grandchildren] up because I'm going to throw out my back. I know I'm thinking way far ahead, but I love my kids so much, and I know they're going to have great kids."

Reported by Cathy Booth Thomas/Dallas; Wendy Cole and Maggie Sieger/Chicago; Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles; Collette McKenna Parker/Atlanta; Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis and Deirdre van Dyk/New York

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