The other day, as I drove across the 86th Street transverse in Central Park, I was stopped by two police men who peered into my car, looked me over, and waved me along. My boys, in the back of the car, asked for the third time this week why we were being stopped.

“The policemen are just keeping us safe,” I said, thankful that my sons are too young to have September 11 as the backdrop to this answer.

My boys may be too young to remember life before September 11, but I am not. When I stop and think about it, I am shocked by how often I am reminded of how different New York is for my children than it was for me growing up.

My children go through metal detectors each morning at school. My husband and I need identification cards to enter their schools. When we celebrated the Jewish New Year at synagogue a few weeks ago, again, the boys asked me why our bags were being searched, why we were being scanned by hand-held metal detectors, and why there were so many policemen outside the building.

It almost seems like a betrayal of my New York roots to admit that I worry about raising my children here, but I do. I worry every time we get into a taxi. I worry when I see an airplane flying too low. I worry when I am informed of the school’s evacuation policy. I loosely plan what I would do if there was a reason for them to be evacuated.

I am not overly anxious when it comes to my children. They love to ride in the way back of the car on bumpy country roads without seat belts, they have eaten peanut butter since they were a year old, and they are covered in scrapes and scars from climbing to nerve-racking heights and occasionally tumbling. As a friend said to me the other day, “My husband worries for your kids because he thinks you don’t worry enough.”

And I know that in many ways, life has never been safer for our children. Infant mortality rates are lower than ever. The medical care available to children in New York is second to none. Violent crime is far lower in New York than it was when I was growing up here in the 1970s and ’80s. As a semi fatalist, I can certainly wrap my head around the thought that whatever is going to happen to my family as a result of terrorism, I’m not going to be able to stop it.

But I was shocked to learn the other day that many of my friends have prepared for a terrorist attack. They have bottled water, duct tape, batteries, flashlights, and canned food ready to use.

“The blackout made me realize just how unprepared I was,” said a friend who has a stash of goods. “When you have kids, there’s all the reason to consider the endless possibilities.”

But we parents don’t talk about the fear of a terrorist attack anymore. It’s easier to talk about safeguarding our family computer from stalkers and at what age our children should have cell phones. It’s more entertaining to discuss teenagers having sex and the pressure to get your child into the right nursery school or kindergarten or college.

One mother in my daughter’s class balked when I asked her if she worried about terrorism impacting her children. “I wouldn’t say I worry,” she insisted. “I’m aware.”

But what’s the difference between being aware and worrying?

In August, a friend of my husband’s and her daughter, who live in a suburb of Los Angeles, were planning to visit us in New York. But as the terror warnings climbed from yellow to orange, I could sense her rising anxiety in her e-mails. Eventually, she changed her plans.

She wrote that she just couldn’t forgive herself if anything happened to her or her daughter. The trip was a special treat for her daughter, but she was leaving two other children in Los Angeles. It was a risk she just couldn’t take.

At first I was annoyed. After all, if the city was safe enough for my family to live in, wasn’t it safe enough for her and her daughter to visit for a week? But of course I knew in my heart what she was feeling, and visiting us in New York as the government warned of specific threats certainly did seem like taking an increased risk.

It seemed fair to hypothesize that if my family had planned to visit her family in California, and a week before we were to leave seismologists began to warn of signs of a major earthquake, we might cancel our vacation. When I turned the tables, the decision seemed obvious.

The increased risk of raising children in New York – if there is an increased risk at all – is something that we New Yorkers force ourselves to overlook.

Besides, there are so many other reasons to worry about our children, and it may be more productive to worry about the risk factors we can exercise some control over. And as city parents have cited for years, there are certain worries – such as drinking and driving – that we don’t have to think about at all in New York.

There is no place I’d rather raise my kids than in this bustling city, with its teeming playgrounds and neighborhood bodegas, vast museums and greasy diners. If daily police checks are part of the deal these days, then welcome to New York City in the 21st century. It’s still home.

Readers can address their parenting questions to Ms. Berman at sberman@nysun.com.