Berliners call Prenzlauer Berg the "district of beautiful mothers."
The leafy section in the east of the German capital is famous for its elegant 19th century houses, tree-lined avenues and trendy restaurants. And hundreds and hundreds of baby buggies and prams.
Once a hang-out for anti-Communist dissidents and now a hip, gentrified quarter, Prenzlauer Berg is experiencing a baby boom which masks the fact that too few Germans are being born.
Excellent child-care facilities built up under Communism, and plentiful playgrounds and parks are luring middle-class couples to settle in the district and buck Germany's falling birth-rate trend.
The playground in Kollwitz Square at the heart of the district illustrates the trend, full of children playing in a recently redesigned sand-pit, while their parents look on fondly.
"It's very comfortable here with the playgrounds and the fact there are places in the kindergartens. It's a cool area," said Anja Hoevelmann, 24, a bookseller from Bremen as toddlers Carla Jo and Gregor made enthusiastic use of the playground.
Annette Witte, a physiotherapist from Berlin, lived in the area before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and said the influx is due to the facilities and a general air of tolerance not found elsewhere in Berlin.
"There's a baby boom here because there are so many young people here. Folk are more tolerant around here. And Prenzlauer Berg is very hip, very `in,'" said Witte, a full-time mother.
The locality's many cafes are thronged with groups of mothers sipping latte macchiatos as their gurgling offspring kick their legs inside the latest must-have Prenzlauer Berg item -- a retro-chic 1970s pram.
German women have on average 1.4 children, well below the 2.1 that demographers say is needed to keep the population steady, and in Berlin the rate is even lower at 1.1.
But in Prenzlauer Berg, the number of babies has risen 24 percent in four years, said Horst Schmollinger, head of population data at the Berlin state statistics office.
"Our statistics show an extraordinary rise in the number of children there. And a nice family-oriented area like Prenzlauer Berg is the sponge most likely to soak up young people from outside Berlin," Schmollinger said, referring to an exodus of young families that followed reunification.
The number of women of childbearing age has risen 26 percent in the same period to nearly 60 percent of women, compared to 44 percent in the rest of Berlin, he said.
The data show the typical mother in the district is between 30 and 35, has an academic qualification, has worked for some time and is in a financially sound and solid relationship.
The birth rate in eastern Germany has fallen dramatically since the end of Communism, but as the middle-class families arrived in Prenzlauer Berg from all over Germany, it was simply a question of re-activating the East German infrastructure of schools and day-care centers to care for their offspring.
"The birth rate in the east of Berlin started to fall dramatically in 1991 and 1992 but the infrastructure is still there for the parents," said Schmollinger.
Germany's birth rate has fallen dramatically and the country is ageing rapidly, putting pressure on pensions and health care.
The population was 82.6 million last year -- barely changed from 82.1 million in 1997 -- and is expected to fall to 81.5 million in the next five years.
But for immigration of around 200,000 annually, the population would have shrunk in the past five years.
All of which has made child care a major political issue and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, in a package of economic reforms last year, diverted billions of euros in government funds to promote all-day schools and creches to help working mothers as well as increasing child benefits and tax allowances.
Berlin's cash-strapped city government, looking for areas to trim spending, has promised that child care will not be on the list of areas where cuts will take place.
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