WHEN Megyn Kelly was starting out in television, a prominent TV newswoman told her, “You’re going to need to choose: you can either have a family or you can be a major anchor.” …

Ms. Kelly — now a Fox News anchor, ex-Jones Day lawyer and blond GQ pinup with the alabaster good looks of Katherine Heigl and the can-do-ism of a former aerobics instructor — decided to ignore her. “It was terrible advice,” she said, recently speaking from her studio.

Ms. Kelly, 41, is part of a new generation of TV anchors — Erica Hill of “The Early Show” on CBS, Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and Soledad O’Brien, formerly of “American Morning” on CNN — who have juggled their careers and family life full-throttle in front of millions of viewers in a way that Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer notably did not. Rather than hide their pregnancies, they flaunt them; rather than cover up their off-hours role as mothers, they turn it into part of their on-air persona.