Yikes! This is one motherly instinct I need to discard

ONE OF THESE days the U.S. Postmaster General is going to come after me. Somehow John E. Potter himself will find out I do not deliver all of my 17-year-old daughter's mail to her.

I freely toss glossy envelopes from Tulane University into the trash by my desk. I don't have anything against Tulane; I just don't want Kelsey to return to New Orleans to go to college. I worry it's still too dangerous there.

I instantly recycle her Victoria's Secret catalog in our neighbor's bin on the way home from the mailbox. No need for my lovely to compare herself to women with breast implants and ample airbrushing.

I carefully slip four-color postcards from GoArmy.com and the National Guard out of her pile of mail. I fold the ads once, twice, three times and slip them deep into the wettest part of the kitchen trash where she just won't ever get a glimpse of them.

And that is exactly when I start to feel guilty.

Last year, authors Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer published an entire book about how upper middle class people are underrepresented in today's military. It was titled "AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes From Military Service - and How It Hurts Our Country."

Instead of seeing military service as a duty the way past generations did, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer observe, our generation of parents view military enlistment as some kind of hawkish political choice or funky personal statement. The authors say we can understand it as a choice for the economically disadvantaged who need money for college or a job after high school. But otherwise, they say we are a generation that looks at military participation as "something like a choice to take up bungee jumping - a bad idea for many, but OK for those sorts of people into that sort of thing."

In other words, military service is OK for everyone else, just not my kid.

When I originally read the book, I never would have imagined myself as the kind of person who would agree with that statement. I would have sworn that I'm nothing like the parents Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer talk about in their book.

I actually know military people. My father, husband, three brothers and two brothers-in-law all served in the military either as officers or enlisted men. I've read that the children of military officers or senior enlisted are six times more likely to serve than their civilian counterparts, and I've always kind of expected that my kids would want to serve, too.

So if I'm so all-fired pro-military, why am I now the kind of person who secretly throws away those ads from the military - as if the ads themselves are so powerful that they would lure Kelsey off our carefully chosen path for her?

When I confessed what I'd been doing to my daughter, she told me to cut it out. But she wasn't at all surprised at my behavior.

"You were the same way when I wanted to be a flight attendant. You told me that if I wanted to be in the travel industry, I had to be a pilot instead."

"I said that?"

"Yeah. You say stuff like that all the time."

I knew she was right. I do still try to shape and mold and exclude things from her life. I don't do it overtly or even consciously, but I do exclude possibilities that I see as even a little dangerous.

Am I now the kind of parent who's so overprotective of her that I'm throwing away the very opportunities that could be the making of her?

I turned to leave the room, but heard a voice behind me, pitched low and certain so that I would be sure to hear. "But you couldn't stop me if I really wanted to go."