Penguin.com (usa)

I suppose it's human nature—we simply don't have enough brain space to worry about everything for everyone all the time. So we pour our angst into our highest priority, our children. Should they be drinking out of plastic bottles, using cell phones, eating processed foods, taking antibiotics, receiving vaccines? Some of these questions have real answers; others just hype. Regardless, we parents have hit a point where we torture ourselves over every detail of our children's lives—all while sipping from our own plastic bottles, talking on cell phones, snacking on processed foods, and swallowing medications.

I am the mother of two young children. This means that I belong to the parenting generation that has been accused of being overbearing, worrying about every little thing, and trying to control every aspect of our children's lives. Generally the accusers are our own parents. "You survived childhood," they say, in a slightly mocking tone, "and we never worried as much about every little thing as you do."

This is true. But our parents lived in a very different world. When our parents had young kids, information was largely limited to the newspaper and the evening news. As a result, the news focused on the most important issues of the day. Today news is a constant barrage that includes twenty-four-hour cable networks, live Web streaming, and anything that might fill a few minutes of screen time or a few inches of crawl space along the bottom of your TV. This lends itself to Breaking Alerts! about pediatric-health horror stories: "Child stops speaking after receiving a vaccine!" "Flesh-eating bacteria spreading through school community!" And then there are the headlines about product recalls: "Don't Give Your Child a Toy Train Because the Paint Is Leaded!" "Don't Let Your Child Sleep in Flame-Retardant Pajamas Because They Are Toxic!" With these arriving on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis, how can we possibly be expected to ignore them?

Beyond being a mom, I am also a pediatrician. A big part of the job is fielding phone calls from worried parents. With each breaking news story, parents want to know what to do for their child. Some take the time to do research on their own, but most people have learned that if you Google long enough, you'll find two sides to every story. This leaves parents even more confused than they were at the outset. So they call the doctor, looking for the simple yes or no answer. When do I need to worry? That's all parents really want to know.

It is ironic that despite our need for simple, straightforward answers we crave more and more information. So much news is coming at us all the time, but most people have no sense of what to do with it, how to prioritize it, and when to worry about it. This is certainly not to say that information should be kept from the public. But as a result of the onslaught, we begin to fear that danger lurks at every turn. With so much to consider, it is easy to lose sight of both the true and relative risks.

Relative risk simply means the risk of an event occurring in connection to an exposure. If one group of people is exposed to something and another is not, the relative risk is the probability that the exposed group will have a specific outcome. In medicine, that outcome may mean developing a disease or even dying.

Risk assessment is a calculation we make many times every day without even knowing it. What is the chance that I will be hit by a car if I jaywalk? What is the chance that I will get a sunburn (or one day even skin cancer) if I don't put on that sunscreen? What is the chance that I will be late to work if I roll over for five or ten more minutes of sleep? Risk assessment can be applied to every decision in our daily life, down to the most mundane.

Relative risk can also be used in a broad sense, forcing us to step away from the trees and look at the whole forest. There are things in our world that are relatively more dangerous than others. For instance, playing with a loaded handgun is a heck of a lot more dangerous than taking a break to get a drink of water out of a plastic bottle. We all know this—no one would disagree. But millions of Americans keep guns in their homes, loaded and accessible to their children.1 This may seem like a ridiculous example, but during the past few years the debate over the safety of plastics has been a continuously covered news item while guns in the home rarely make headlines. Ultimately, what we read about in the paper or online, hear about on TV, and talk about with friends tends to be in the forefront of our minds, often magnifying the actual risk. These days, because we are increasingly focused on specific issues, we may overlook things that are relatively more dangerous.

Whether we agonize over the foods we eat or the chemicals in our environment, it is easy to lose sight of the actual number of people affected in a negative way. When we blow potential hazards out of proportion, we think intently about tiny decisions and start to see much of our world through a narrow lens. Many parents tell me they don't like approaching the world this way but they just can't help it.