There are elements of realistic thinking and basic moral standards you have to take into account. When you have a child, they don't have to earn their keep. It's not like they have to pay you back for giving them life and a home to live in, you make a contract with them when you decide to keep them during pregnancy. Many parents I know believe that their duty to their children doesn't end when they leave home - it's a lifelong responsibility. With that in mind, children have certain fundamental rights. One of them is privacy. On the very basic level, nobody likes having their privacy unnecessarily compromised. For many parents, when it is obvious that a child is keeping a secret, a certain feeling of righteousness creeps up inside and demands to know what they're hiding. Parenting shouldn't involve these sorts of primal feelings, they are irrational and harmful. To actually answer the question and end this tirade, protectiveness can be helped by decent parent/child communication. This starts at birth. I make a point of apologising to toddlers if I get in their way or anything, even if they can't speak yet. This form of unconscious respect goes both ways, and if the parent bothers to explain consequences of actions they've taken to their children, taking measures to protect their children shouldn't turn out so ham-fisted - as people tend to worry they will. It also depends on what you consider may harm your children, and what may merely open their mind. Feeling that you need to step in and protect your children from assumed moral degradation is a sign of irrationality that it is important to watch out for.

Drawing the line makes me think of setting our gauge of morals. Do we simply look around us and emulate out of others what we think is good? Do we rely on ourselves and our own best judgment to do whats right? Do we turn to religion in search for guidance from a higher power? Personally I've grown up with the phrase "nobody's perfect" and have never doubted it. It doesn't take much to look around and realize you are no different than everyone else when it comes to faults, unless your ego is the size of Montana. Society offers a collective "majority rule" method. Relying on yourself offers a kind of "I'm never wrong" monarchal status. Religions offer a kind of "our way is just better for you" and some often dare say "our better way is the only way". I think I most fall in to the religious category because I see my own judgmental ability as being no better than anyone else's. It narrows it down to that I don't want to rely on either myself or anyone else and look to the answer of religion that promises a perfect deity that can show you how to make the perfect decisions. sure we can still fail after all "we are only human" but I guess I'm satisfied with that because I feel I am drawing towards a better source where the closer I get the better I am. I guess I got tired of taking everything with a grain of salt..