Baby Talk : Even if mom doesn’t marry, she still wants a good start for her child. She wants a shower--with all the trimmings.

Marcy Williams had it all: her own ad business, hot-shot clients, a hefty bank account.

It was time to start a family, she thought.

Being no stickler for tradition, and with no romantic partner in sight, Williams, 38, sought artificial insemination and was soon with child.

“Women like me don’t observe the old traditions,” she told her wide-eyed Aunt Minna recently, as they sipped champagne at her very traditional baby shower in a West Hollywood restaurant.

It was an adorably decorated event--blue balloons and teddy bears--which Williams called “the closest thing to old-fashioned ritual that this family will see from me. I don’t know why, but I just love baby showers. In fact, I’m having three.”

She is not alone. Among women who take the usual route to motherhood as well as women like Williams, who’ve dispensed with time-honored rituals surrounding love, marriage and procreation, the baby shower--which some might consider the ditziest tradition of all--is flourishing.

And it’s not just because these moms-to-be want to outfit their kids for free.

More important, says Barrie Thorne, USC professor of sociology, baby showers publicly celebrate a woman’s change of status in society. They’re especially meaningful for unmarried pregnant women who have had no engagement parties, weddings or other celebrations to mark their passage from free-wheeling solo act to a person of family responsibilities.

The phenomenon is fascinating, Thorne says: “As we alter lifestyles and reproductive technology, some rituals surrounding birth are changing. But the old-fashioned baby shower becomes more important instead of less so because, in many instances, it is society’s only way of acknowledging a woman’s transition and shifting position in the community.”

Or, as Williams phrases it: “Sure, the gifts are great. But for me, the showers are a really big deal because I never had a wedding. This is my one big form of celebration with friends and family. I wanted a wonderful way in which to mark the end of my old life and the beginning of my new one, and that of my child.”

In some circles, showers have assumed a new etiquette. Instead of sending cute invitations that simply state time and place, some give the name of the shop where the mother-to-be is registered.

“It’s like a bridal registry, except it’s for baby furniture and accessories instead of china and crystal,” explains Nataliya Tonkonog of the Bellini shop in Beverly Hills.

“The whole procedure is a lot different than it used to be,” Tonkonog says. “Some shower invites even include a printed list of what the mother-to-be wants as gifts, including style number and color of each item.”

Over at Neiman Marcus, baby shower business is apparently booming, too. Salesman Michael Greer says one woman recently “came in waving a three-page printed list that was enclosed with her shower invitation. It told what the baby needed, where to get each item and how much each thing cost.”

Judith Martin, author of the syndicated Miss Manners column, heartily disapproves.

“Greed has invaded baby showers, which is the last place you want to find it,” Martin fumes.

“A shower,” says Martin, “should be a lighthearted event where friends bring little gifts. But it has escalated into a request for serious contributions. We already have ‘cash showers,’ where guests are asked to give money instead of gifts, and ‘showers by mail,’ ” which means there’s no party at all--just a cute request that you send a gift.

Joan Hyler, vice president of motion pictures at the William Morris Agency and agent for Candice Bergen, Juliette Lewis and Diane Ladd, among others, has tossed quite a few showers in recent years. No, they’re not considered superfluous, old-fashioned or greed-inspired by Hollywood’s modern motherhood set, she says.

Hyler remembers a shower she co-hosted for Dawn Steel, then president of Columbia Pictures, at which Barbra Streisand and Sherry Lansing were among the 50 celebrants.

“The more successful we become, the more critical it is to pause and honor what is most essential in our natures,” Hyler says. “We need to reflect on what it means to be a woman, to become a mother, and to share the passages that mark us as physical beings. We have fought to achieve our professional goals, but we must never forget who we are. We may be equal, but we are different.”

“Nuts,” says actress and author Carrie Fisher, who described herself at the time of this interview as “35 years old, eight months pregnant and unwed.” (On July 18, she gave birth to Billie Catherine.)

“I’m being given a shower by two friends, and I think it’s very sweet but also very weird. Part of me is horrified and part of me is thrilled. I’m boggled by what it all means. There will be 40 guests, some of them men.

“In one sense you’re happy because you think that after the shower you’ll have everything you need for the baby. . . . The horrified part of me wonders how the men will hold up, because women usually talk about pregnancy and childbirth in a very graphic way at these events. It’s a part of the ritual that transcends class,” says Fisher, whose boyfriend/baby’s father is Hollywood agent Bryan Lourd.

(As for the tradition of marriage, Fisher says she would marry Lourd, “but I’ve been married before. It’s like traveling to a foreign country--having been there once, I would like to go somewhere else. I mean I understand marriage as a tradition, as something that provides security. But in my case, I do not need marriage to improve my financial or social standing--and I’d make a lousy wife.”)

Although showers used to be all-woman affairs, the trend is to include men.

“We’re in transition about all this now,” says Lois Banner, chair of USC’s program for the study of men and women. “I’m a very firm feminist and, in a gender-equal world, I think men should not only be invited to showers, but the fathers should also get gifts. We’re in the middle of this whole male sensitivity movement, and it’s important to include the men.”

Kathleen Rogers hates that idea. She and her husband live in Los Feliz, own a public relations firm and are proud parents of a 10-month-old son. But she remembers with horror the shower her sister-in-law planned for her last year, which was scheduled to include men.

“When you’re 34, huge with child and feeling rotten, there’s nothing less appealing than a co-ed party meant to focus on your ‘condition,’ ” Rogers says.

“I loved my sister-in-law for planning it, but I got so sick we had to call the whole thing off. I later learned they’d planned to play a horrible game called ‘Guess How Big Around She Is?” where everyone tries to guess the size of your waistline.”

Instead of the shower, Rogers says she happily stayed in bed while her husband rubbed her back and her feet.

“Showers are silly and archaic,” she concludes.

But that doesn’t seem to be the feeling among women who have no one to rub their backs or to share the joys and pains of impending motherhood. Many of these women, experts say, would happily crawl out of a sickbed to attend an event that offers support, friendship and acknowledgment of new life.

And among low-income single women, desire for a baby shower can take precedence over almost everything else. That’s what Kathryn Hall, founder of the Birthing Project in Sacramento, says she learned late last year.

“A young woman came to us eight months pregnant. She was deserted by her boyfriend, had no job, no medical care, no money, no family and no place to live. She was sleeping in the streets,” Hall recalls.

“We took her in, got her to a doctor, perked up her spirits and were trying desperately to find her a place to live, so she could give her baby a home. When we finally found one, we all jumped for joy, but she wasn’t as excited as we were.

“We asked what was wrong, what was bothering her and she started to cry. She appreciated everything, she said, but the thing she wanted most in the world was a baby shower--a party to honor the child she was about to bring into the world.

“To her, it was as if nobody cared about this momentous event--a new life about to be born, a life that held magic and in which all good things might come true. We understood that perfectly. We gave her a shower she’d never forget.”