Prosperity and higher pay for their jobs are leaving women free NOT to work. Average wages are rising, employers are beating the bushes for hires. There's more flexibility and equity in the workplace. As you might expect, these attractions are changing women's approach to work. But are they piling into the welcoming job market? No, they're edging out. A rising proportion of young women appear to be choosing motherhood over career.

It's one of prosperity's side effects. When couples feel they need two incomes to survive, more moms lean toward full-time paying jobs. When they can manage on just one income (or one and a half), they lean toward part-time work or staying home full time. A few dads do, too, but it's predominantly moms.

Many mothers, of course, choose to keep working, to maintain their incomes or careers. Of those 36 to 40, more than 40 percent work all year in full-time paying jobs - double the number 30 years ago. Other mothers have always stayed home or chosen flexible "mommy track" jobs.

But there's a palpable shift - led, as usual, by the boomers. In the 1960s, when women first muscled into the work force, at-home moms all but apologized for what they did. But once those same boomer women started families (often late in their 30s), staying home with the kids became the preferred thing to do.

Like their mothers, these women are adopting traditional roles - investing in their husbands' careers rather than their own. Unlike their mothers (and thanks to the feminist achievement), they don't feel trapped. "A lot of women my age don't feel a big need to work because they know they can if they want to," says Kate Francisco, 32, or Langhorne, Pa., a mother of two.