People often joke about overprotective parents, especially dads, and how they take protecting their daughters very seriously.  There are fathers on the internet, making jokes about never letting their daughters have a boyfriend. In a recent video circulating the internet, a man tricked his toddler daughter into signing that she won’t have a boyfriend until 2031.  While these jokes may be funny to many of us, we have to ruminate over why female children; especially BLACK female children are heavily “protected” but still the least protected.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defined the word “overprotective” as “to protect someone or something more than is necessary or reasonable”. Given how often women and girls and especially BLACK women and girls are harmed by men, it is not out of place for parents to take extra measures in protecting their daughters, but the question is this; are parents really protective of their female children? 

It’s not protection if it harms her.

In Nigeria, many parents go out of their way to demonstrate their “protectiveness” of their daughters and in many cases, these “protective” measures are detrimental to the health and well-being of their female children. So harmful are some of these protective measures that one can rightly say that these girls and young women do not need to be protected by their parents but need to be protected FROM their parents. For instance, despite the abolishment and criminalization of the act by the former president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, in some Nigerian societies, parents still believe that it is okay to mutilate their daughters by cutting off her clitoris or partly cutting it off in order to “protect” her from being promiscuous in the future.  Some other parents do absurd things like hitting their daughters with wooden spoons and spatulas on their chests to prevent their breasts from growing. They do this to “protect” their daughters from getting sexually abused by predators and to prevent them from getting undue male attention.  Young Nigerian girls deal with being harassed by their parents, especially their mothers. These women do things like examine and probe their daughters’ vaginas to know if they have been involved in any sexual activity. They do this to prevent their daughters from having sex and getting pregnant.

“Overprotective" parents often create vastly different rules for their male and female children. Girls are slammed with unreasonable curfews while their brothers stay out for as long as they want. Sometimes, these parents don’t even let their daughters out at all. There is also the blatant regular invasion of their daughters’ privacy by doing things like searching and going through their cell phones, closet, bags, and personal belongings.

A few years back, American rapper, T.I revealed that he takes his daughter, Deyjah Harris to the hospital yearly to have her hymen checked. Some comments from netizens excused this absurd behavior and said he was only being "protective" of his daughter. 

It is not protection if I don't feel protected. 

 One starts to wonder how overprotectiveness works when BLACK girls all over the world are still the least protected people in the world. Studies reveal that in Nigeria, one in four girls has been sexually abused and a large majority of the ones who were abused were mostly abused by family relations and friends. Nigeria, despite being heavily populated with parents who pride themselves as "protective", these parents have not created a safe environment for their daughters to come to them to report being sexually abused.  Girls who feel protected by their parents will certainly talk to their parents if they believe they are being abused.

When I was younger, a boy who lived just behind our house assaulted me. I cried home to tell my parents and they went with me to the home of the boy who had hit me. Somehow, my parents and his parents ended up laughing over it and talking about how children could be very silly. However, the boy who wrote me a love letter and attached a bright red greeting card for Valentine’s Day did not get that same reaction from my parents. They were furious, threatened him,and ensured he was punished for sending me a love note. I often think back to these two incidents and how it depicts what many BLACK families consider protection. How is it protection when you are not protecting me from actual harm? How is it protection when you create no strong consequences for someone who actually hurt me but rain fire and brimstone on someone who gifted me cards that I happily accepted?

It’s not protection if it’s not protection from actual danger.

In Nigeria, "overprotective" parents do all they can to prevent their daughters from having consensual sex, but when a man forces himself on their daughter they are quite lax about getting justice for her, most times they don’t even bother to seek justice and have no problem abandoning the case and “leaving it to God”. Many even blame the victim, their daughters , or share the blame between their daughters and their rapists. What then is the point of being overprotective, if thousands of young women never get the justice they deserve for being sexually abused because their parents and guardians don't care enough to pursue such cases or sometimes willingly forgive their abusers? 

It appears that what many parents term as protection is just them trying to control their daughters’ vaginas. They police these girls and young women and then say they are only being protective. When they are quizzed about the extreme length they go to prevent their daughters from using their vaginas, their usual response is that they do not want their daughters to get pregnant. On why they impose harder rules on their daughters than on their sons, they say “oh but boys can’t get pregnant”. Indeed, boys can’t get pregnant but they become fathers too, which could change a young man’s life forever. Yes, pregnancy does not make a drastic change to the lives and bodies of young boys as it does to young girls but if what “overprotective” parents really want to protect their daughters from is pregnancy, then isn’t the solution to teach them safe sex and create a safe environment where they can speak to them freely about their sexual lives? Being overly “protective” of female children has very little to do with girls getting pregnant but with controlling and preventing girls from having consensual sex. These parents would still be horrified to find out that their daughters are having safe sex too, so their overbearing attitude has never been about protecting their young women from bearing the burden of being a mother so early.  It is almost like some of these parents would prefer that their daughters are never willing parties to sex, this is judging from how societies (made up of these parents) are very quick to judge harshly and punish women for having consensual sex than they are interested in punishing men who sexually assault women.

Many Nigerian women remain in terribly physically and emotionally abusive marriages because their parents would never support them in leaving such marriages. These are parents who are very aware of how their daughters are being battered and were probably super “protective” of her as a child. Where is that protection when women really need to be protected?

If the only time you want to protect your daughter is when she makes independent choices on what to do with her body; what to wear or who to sleep with, then that is not protection, it is control.  

 It’s not protection if society is not protective.

People talk very often about how women are protected and how men have to protect women but it is obvious to all that women are anything but protected.

A society that is very interested in protecting young women from dealing with teenage pregnancy or unwanted pregnancies, in general, would do things like make contraceptives free or very affordable for women, and legalize abortion so if all else fails, young women can have safe abortions.

A society that is interested in protecting women from being harmed by men would not try to limit women’s freedom but hold men accountable for harming women and raising better sons so their girls can be safe. Ironically, parents who are extremely controlling of their female children are the exact opposite of their male children. They leave their sons to indulge in excesses or even criminal activities while investing all their emotions and only fully concentrating on how short their daughters’ skirts are. 

 What many women are convinced to consider as protection from their parents is really just control.