Will I Let My Daughter Play in the Woods Unsupervised?

I think about this question all the time, and I don’t know the answer.

I live in western Pennsylvania, a valley surrounded by mountains. I live in the same small town where I grew up. It is an absolutely beautiful part of the country.

My best friend growing up, Susan, and I used to frequently play in the woods by her house unsupervised. We built little houses out of sticks. We climbed steep overhangs. We swam in the creek, which had strong currents after a rainstorm. We left the house for hours, sometimes even getting lost and returning to find to our surprise, no one had been that concerned.

This is childhood at its best. It is an experience of indescribable value that I wish for all children.

My daughter just turned 5, and she is fearless (I don’t know where she gets this from!) She drags us onto every scary ride at our local amusement park. She sings songs in front of crowds without nervousness. She runs up to kids at the playground and initiates games of hide-and-seek.

In just a year or two, she would probably love the explore the woods alone or with friends.

I don’t know whether I will let her.

As an anxious mom, I’ve spent so much of the past 5 years considering risk. Many parenting decisions do seem like a risk/benefit analysis.

As parents, we all accept the risks that are part of normal everyday life. We put our kids in the car even though car accidents are a leading cause of death and injury in kids. Many of us live in homes with staircases and stove tops and toilet bowls filled with water and even kitchen knives.

Some of these realities are accepted because we have decided it’s worth the risk. Some of these are accepted because we have no other options. Some of these are accepted because it’s the way we’ve always done things and no one has yet questioned it (thank goodness- our world is exhausting enough!)

Here are my concerns regarding the forest question:

The safety risks: her getting lost or kidnapped by a lone creeper or mauled to death by a black bear or bitten by a poisonous snake or drowning in a creek. All of these are unlikely, but not impossible.

The risk of judgment: Someone will see her playing with a friend alone and will judge me harshly or even call the police. (If you haven’t, you should read “Motherhood in the Age of Fear” from 2018 by the New York Times- fascinating read.) I don’t want to romanticize the past which had its own problems, but letting a child play unsupervised is no longer seen as acceptable by many, a reality with both positive and negative outcomes.

I have just a few observations:

When it comes to evaluating risk/benefits, the risks can easily be envisioned and put into words. The benefits are so hard to describe and often cannot be captured by data. The benefits are often something we intuitively know, something undervalued in our culture today, something worth considering.

Behind this question is a bigger quandary all parents have to face. We want to control the world our children inhabit. We want to eliminate the risks and problems, but, ultimately, we can’t and even if we could, this would become its own sort of danger to our child.

The world is dangerous and full of risks. We have children that are vulnerable. We cannot handle this reality. Well, at least I can’t. That’s really the struggle behind the question, the one I wrestle with on a daily basis.

Will I let her play in the woods alone? I’m not sure yet, but either way, I will be unhappy with my decision.