I’m either over-protective or logically cautious, whichever way, it’s out of love.

By over-protective I don’t mean that I’m the Helicopter Parent who hovers meticulously close to doing everything for their children and won’t allow them to make a mistake, or the Bubble-Wrap Parent who will race in with hand sanitizer and a stern lecture if they touch something germy, (although I have been accused of being both at times). But let’s be truthful, we’ve all taken on attributes of that type of parenting at times, especially if it is your first child. What I mean is that I am probably far more protective than previous generations as many parents these days are.

I am over-protective of my kids partially because of the media and the ease of information in the age of the internet. I am the mother of two, trusting little girls and my over-protectiveness is based on fear.

Today, as our daughters played with some neighborhood kids in the front yard, where we could see them through the window, my husband asked me what I thought about letting our 3-year-old run around with the kids like we do our 9-year-old and immediately my heart sped up. He gave good reasons, like the fact that we live on a kid-friendly street that dead ends in a cul-de-sac, that we knew and trusted the majority of the families, and the fact that her big sister would be with her, but I immediately shot down the possibility. I was instantly stricken with the fear of losing my child to a car coming down the street and not seeing her, or worse, someone taking her.

Years ago, when my husband and I were children, it would have been perfectly acceptable to let our youngest run around with her big sister and play. Unfortunately after years of watching "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit," following news coverage such as the Jessica Lunsford case, and knowledge of the depravity that human beings are capable of, fear is my first response to being told I “need to loosen the reins.”

But this fear wasn’t just born out of being bombarded by these terrible crimes on television and in newspapers, it also comes from the way I was raised. Coming from a family consisting mostly of women, knowledge of these crimes hit closer to home in a personal and profound sense.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center: “One in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18-years-old.”

1 in 4: Statistically, at least one of these girls has known an especially cruel type of abuse.

Growing up, it was drilled into my sisters and me that the risk of a situation should be assessed at all times and this advice was not always followed. When I became pregnant with my first child I was given the advice that daycare should be out of the question until the child can talk and tell you if anything bad is happening to them or be at an age where you will recognize the signs. Men have to truly prove their trustworthiness in my family.

I never even realized how affected I was by the knowledge of these sorts of crimes until the moment my first daughter was born. She was no longer inside me, I could no longer protect her, and I felt powerless. It was a terrifying realization that I had not anticipated. The first couple of weeks after she was born I didn’t want anyone around her, I even kept her father at a distance, which in hindsight was cruel as he is an amazing father. I didn’t understand it until much later but the distance I forced was entirely based in fear; his only crime was being born a man in a culture where women fear them.

You could ask “What makes you naturally fear that?” Well, statistically it is a valid fear. Let’s look at the odds here:

Odds of being attacked by a shark: 1 in 11.5 million (But people still fear sharks.)

Odds of your plane crashing: 1 in 11 million (But people still fear flying.)

Odds of being struck by lightning: 1 in 174,426 (But people still fear storms.)

Odds of being intentionally shot: 1 in 7,944 (But people still fear being shot.)

Odds of accidentally drowning: 1 in 1,183 (But people still fear drowning.)

Odds of a man being raped in his lifetime: 1 in 71 (That’s a bit precarious; so a logical fear.)

Odds of a woman being raped in her lifetime: 1 in 5 (It suddenly seems logical for women to fear being raped.)

Odds of a boy being sexually abused before the age of 18: 1 in 6 (It’s definitely logical for parents to fear for their sons.)

Odds of a girl being sexually abused before the age of 18: 1 in 4 (It’s definitely logical for parents to fear for their daughters.)

Odds of me being scared by these sorts of statistics: 1 in 1, 100%. It is a totally logical fear.

Being the mother of young girls is stressful because of this fear that most women carry internally, whether we realize it or not. So yes, I may be a bit over-protective, but in this world of risk versus freedom, I think I am doing a decent job of balancing the two. Protecting my girls means that they need to know what is right and what is wrong where touching is concerned, no matter who it is. Many times abusers are family or close family friends. I tell my girls that if it feels wrong they should tell Mom or Dad, no matter what the person says. They know they can come to me, talk to me, ask questions and get answers. They need to know that no one can hurt Mom or Dad and that they will not be in trouble since that is a common threat given to child victims; that their family will be hurt or that they will be in trouble, not the perpetrator. If you don’t discuss the possibility then your child doesn’t know what to do if it happens to them. No matter how much I want to protect my girls I can’t be with them 24/7, which scares me to no end but is a fear all parents must live with.

Discussing sexual abuse is like discussing the birds and the bees or approaching puberty: It is strange and uncomfortable to discuss with your child at first but it needs to be done, and reiterated often, for their safety.