The Parents We Are Becoming

A tweet stopped me in my tracks recently. It read, “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie using a surrogate to get twin boys is ridiculously disappointing.” It was posted in March, and though I didn’t engage with it online, it’s been living in my head ever since. The disappointment implied in that sentence surprised me. I hadn’t really thought about surrogacy in moral terms before. To me, it has always seemed like a consensual process, a technological option available to those who want or need it. But that tweet nudged something open. Not just about surrogacy, but about reproductive technologies more broadly. It made me realize how little we talk about the ethical frameworks that underpin these decisions, especially in the quiet moments between headlines and progress.

Later, I read the interview where Chimamanda confirmed the story herself. She didn’t owe anyone that truth, but she shared it anyway. She had twin boys through surrogacy. A private joy, made suddenly public. A cultural icon placed on a pedestal, now judged for stepping down and choosing a path that many women do quietly, without fanfare.

I didn’t feel disappointed when I read her confirmation. I felt protective. I felt curious. And more than anything, I felt unsettled. Because I’ve been thinking a lot about the world we are stepping into. A world where it is no longer just about becoming a parent, but about designing the kind of child you want before the child even exists.

That unease only deepened after reading The Embryo Question, a series in the New York Times. One story in particular stayed with me. On June 24, 2022, the same day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a woman received a call from her fertility clinic. Seven of her fertilized eggs had made it to the blastocyst stage. The next day, she watched on a black-and-white screen as one of them was transferred into her uterus. One became her daughter. The other six remained frozen. In that moment, she realized she was responsible not just for one potential life, but for six more. All of this unfolding alongside a national conversation about what "potential life" even means.

It reminded me how strange and fragile this terrain really is. We think of technology as something that saves us from uncertainty, but it often just replaces one kind of uncertainty with another. Today, embryos are ranked, selected, frozen, or discarded. Some are kept indefinitely. Others are tested for disease, intelligence, or "low-risk" traits. Some are abandoned because their polygenic scores fall short of a desired ideal. Companies like Orchid market these services as tools of love and protection, offering parents a chance to optimize their child’s future. But I keep wondering if we are still trying to have children, or if we are trying to control the outcome.

That tension sits at the heart of so many modern choices. I’ve watched someone close to me carry and deliver a child. I saw the fear, the exhaustion, the risk. I saw the hospital visits, the back pain, the long nights of gas and colic. I saw what it does to a person. And I’ve come to understand why someone might choose another path. IVF. Surrogacy. Adoption. None of these choices are simple, but all of them are valid.

What I do wrestle with is access. These technologies are not distributed equally. Reproductive privilege, like so many forms of privilege, mirrors class. Wealthier families can afford cord blood banking, private doulas, elite fertility clinics, early screening panels like Horizon and Panorama, and yes, the best surrogates. These options go beyond health. They begin to touch optimization. Not just the hope for a healthy child, but the design of a child with certain traits: height, intelligence, even eye color. It starts to feel like private school at the molecular level.

That imbalance is the thread I keep returning to. If gene editing becomes safe and precise, should it be limited to fixing life-threatening conditions? Or will it also be used to enhance traits that society finds desirable? And if so, who decides what is worth enhancing? What happens to the child who might have been screened out? Or to the parent who wants to avoid risk but cannot afford the tools?

This became more real to me recently as I started having conversations about parenthood in romantic contexts. Many of the women I’ve spoken with want children, but they are afraid of what pregnancy could do to their bodies, their health, and their lives. One of them works in healthcare. She knows the science. But awareness is not the same as comfort, and comfort is not the same as desire. Adoption has come up more than once. And I’ve found myself open to it. Surrogacy and IVF, though, are harder to talk about. There’s still a fog around them. Maybe it is cultural. Maybe it is faith. Maybe it is just the weight of moral uncertainty.

But the deeper I go, the more I think this isn’t just a personal dilemma. It is a societal one. Because once the embryo becomes the child, we are still not done. After the lab work, the transfer, the pregnancy, and the birth comes the question no one really talks about: what kind of parents are we becoming?

Right after reading the New York Times series, I read Emily Witt’s article in The New Yorker about elite parenting in Palm Beach. On the surface, it is about domestic labor: six-figure nannies, live-in housekeepers, private chefs. But really, it is about a new style of parenting that is less about presence and more about performance. These are households where two nannies rotate shifts to maintain round-the-clock support. Where Montessori is administered not at school, but at home by trained professionals. Where children grow up in environments optimized for development, behavior, and reputation.

There is nothing wrong with help. Every parent needs it. But when parenting becomes something that is outsourced and choreographed, it changes the dynamic. It creates children who may be loved but are also managed. Who learn to say please and thank you before they understand what it means to want something. Who experience emotional regulation as a service, rather than as a lesson.

And this is not a rich-people-only problem. These norms trickle down. They reshape what good parenting looks like. Suddenly, if you are not screening embryos, hiring consultants, and planning your child's resume before preschool, it feels like you are falling behind. This is the danger. We begin to move from care to control. From love to logistics. From raising a child to managing an outcome.

That shift is subtle but profound. It turns the home into a workplace. It turns children into projects. And it creates a quiet pressure that no policy, no therapy, and no parenting book has truly addressed.

At the same time, the inequalities deepen. Public schools remain underfunded. Maternal mortality remains high, especially among Black women. Families drown in hospital bills from failed IVF cycles. Legislators argue over frozen embryos without asking a more urgent question: what kind of families are we building?

We need policy, but not just bans and restrictions. We need ethical frameworks that are inclusive, forward-thinking, and humane. We need oversight that respects both science and uncertainty. We need to ask, again and again, not just what is possible, but what is right.

Because here is what I believe: not every embryo needs to be optimized. Not every child needs to be exceptional to be loved. The future of reproduction is not just about science. It is about values. And before we let the market decide which children are worth having, maybe we should ask ourselves what kind of parents we want to be.

I began this journey with personal questions. I am ending it with more. But maybe that is the right place to be.

These technologies are miraculous. And they are unsettling. They offer new life, and they demand new ethics. They show us who we are, and who we might become.

So here we are, standing at the intersection of love and science, fate and freedom, data and dignity. Still searching. Always human.