How can I bring children into this world? The question surfaced in my mind as the attacks on the World Trade Center unfolded on that impossibly clear morning of September 11, 2001. Just one day earlier, I had learned I was pregnant with my third child. Hours earlier, I had been filled with uncomplicated joy, imagining our growing family, wondering whether this baby might be a daughter after two boys. I hadn\u2019t yet worried about the logistics of caring for three small children with only two arms. I hadn\u2019t thought about how we would fit another child into our tiny studio apartment, which we jokingly referred to as a ten-room studio. I wasn\u2019t thinking about work-life balance or my own health. I was simply elated. <\/p>\n
But as the world experienced an inconceivable rupture, that joy was pierced by a sudden, personal terror. Hearing about the first airplane, then the second striking the towers, and finally the realization that this was a coordinated attack, the sense of shock deepened with each unfolding moment. With it, the thought of bringing new life into a world that could fracture so violently became overwhelming, almost frightening. <\/p>\n
This was not the first time I had questioned the act of bringing children into the world, and I am far from the first to ask it. Across centuries, thinkers and texts have returned to this same unsettling thought, from Sophocles\u2019 stark claim that \u201cnot to be born is best of all,\u201d to Ecclesiastes lament (4:2-3) \u201cAnd I praise the dead who have already died, above the living, who are yet alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun”.<\/p>\n
In New York City, conversations about children are often practical and transactional: focused on the cost of raising them, the scarcity of space, the policies meant to support families, and the political promises made to young and struggling parents. At the same time, in many communities, including my own, family is held up as a moral anchor, the highest ideal. Yet the deeper, more ambivalent questions about parenthood<\/a> are rarely voiced. Within these unspoken assumptions, having a family is expected, and doubts about whether to bring children into the world feel private, even isolating. In the shadow of that day\u2019s events, knowing that life was already forming within me, this long-suppressed question returned with force: why bring children into a world capable of such profound human cruelty?<\/p>\n Like the rest of New Yorkers that day, I felt the pull homeward and realized it was time to relieve the sitter, to make sure we were safe, and to be together. When I arrived, I was grateful<\/a> that we had chosen not to have a television. Our children were still very young, but deeply observant, and I wanted to avoid, if at all possible, the impossible task of explaining acts of terror to them.<\/p>\n Being with our boys calmed me. I avoided graphic news and conversations with neighbors and other parents, conversations filled with anxious<\/a> speculation about food shortages or complaints about disrupted holiday travel plans. I yearned for isolation with my family. Perhaps my own past experiences with terror had grounded me, preparing me to respond differently. My thoughts were elsewhere.<\/p>\n Playing with our children, reading silly books, and building train sets became the best antidote to my fear<\/a>. Their untroubled joy offered a glimpse of something better: possibility, continuity, a future not yet shaped by violence. As we spent those enclosed days together, I began to wonder whether I was projecting my fears onto them, whether I was becoming overprotective.<\/p>\n I realized that my question about bringing new life into the world was rooted in the intense responsibility of parenthood, the instinct to protect, to ensure that children grow healthy in body and mind. This instinct, shared across mammalian life, drives us to care for and defend our young. In that sense, our usual deliberations about when to have children and how many we can afford are really assessments of our perceived ability to care for them.<\/p>\n Yet days like this reveal a deeper truth: we do not fully control our lives. We live in a world of data and predictions, imagining that more information will allow us to live safer, more protected lives. But data offers probabilities, not guarantees; statistics about survival as a species, not certainty for any one individual. The embryo growing inside me was already beyond my control. I could take prenatal vitamins, eat carefully, avoid risks, but I could not determine the timing of birth, the child\u2019s health, or who this person would become. <\/p>\n Personal Perspectives Essential Reads<\/p>\n As my belly grew and I watched my children play, I felt increasingly forward-looking and hopeful. Children do more than bring joy; they remind us of our ethical obligation, acting as a counterforce to evil. Gradually, over the following months, I internalized a different understanding of my role as a parent, not as a guardian of certainty, but as someone tasked with preparing children for life\u2019s inevitable challenges and nurturing them in the safest world I can help create. As parents, we can teach caring and responsibility, guiding them to engage with the world in ways that reduce harm and sustain goodness. Through them, life continues, and our capacity for love and care finds its clearest expression.<\/p>\n A second realization emerged amid the devastation: the attacks had brought into sharp focus our human struggle with mortality. Bringing new life into the world is magical in the truest sense, a truth I had heard before giving birth, but only fully understood once I experienced it myself. In moments like these, the presence of death feels unbearable, carrying with it an overwhelming sense of helplessness and loss of control.<\/p>\n As the pregnancy<\/a> neared its end, my husband and I turned to practical matters, preparing for a new addition to our family, though we were far less prepared for what would follow. We hadn\u2019t planned who would be with our children if I went into labor in the middle of the night, which is exactly what happened. Still, nothing could have prepared us for what came next.<\/p>\n Late at night, I sat alone with my newborn daughter, BG for baby girl, whom we had not even named. At last, our small studio apartment was quiet. I had made it through another day caring for our three small children. At the same time, my husband had just lost his father, our Papi. Papi would never meet his granddaughter or share in this moment of joy. What should have been purely celebratory became something far more complex: a collision of grief<\/a> and happiness<\/a>, intertwined in ways I had never imagined.<\/p>\n It was in that moment of immense pain and profound love that I understood something with clarity: bearing children is the ultimate response to death. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How can I bring children into this world? 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