Girl Scout Camping - Dads

[Anonymous]

How does your elementary troop handle camping if dads want to join? We are camping in a month with troop, and it seems like the process is a background check and DH needs to camp in a separate campsite away from the girls? So our DD will sleep with me, and he will be a site over with any other dads that end up going?

Is this generally well received? DH is a little unsure of all the parents are okay with it, and of course many may not really say what they think?

[Anonymous]

At GS (cabin) camp a few years ago, this is what the dads did. No one batted an eye.

[Anonymous]

In our troop the two campout-certified adults are the troop leader (a woman) and a dad who was an Eagle Scout. The dad doesn't have any issue with the rules (separate camp area, separate designated bathroom) because he understands the rationale. We have a Daisy troop so a very high proportion of parents to scouts come camping, because most girls aren't comfortable sleeping away from their family yet. Dads know they're welcome because there will be at least one dad there for sure. The other parents, moms and dads, are comfortable with any dads who bring their Scout because they know the rules and largely agree with them and know why they exist.

I'm not sure how it will change as the girls get older - puberty could complicate things but hopefully we will have built strong bonds by then and be able to navigate any feelings that arise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At GS (cabin) camp a few years ago, this is what the dads did. No one batted an eye.

Cabin camping feels quite different.

But I guess there is still concern if girls are walking to the bathroom alone at night.

[Anonymous]

Men are required to be in a segregated area. Chaperones are required to be background checked. These are council wide rules and might be required as part of the gSUSA charter. I never heard any guy complaining. When we do council wide encampment there is always a big group of guys in the guy area. And I know several troop leaders who are guys, and they still sleep separately (it’s a little bit of a pain for them because they need to have enough female volunteers to meet the overnight safety ratios for the girls area).

I will note that “family camping” is not the norm in GS. More typical is that you have girls sharing tents with sufficient adult chaperons to at least meet safety ratios. So normally you wouldn’t have both parents attending and if a dad wasn’t comfortable going that would be totally fine. If you have younger gilrls (k-2) I can see doing something like family camping or having each girl sleep in a tent with a parent to get them used to it. The only time we did ifamily camping was during Covid when girls couldn’t share tents. One girl’s dad came instead of the mom and I just put them in a different camp site that was right next to the main one. They were with us right up until bedtime.

[Anonymous]

Sorry I think I was unclear in my last post. The norm is for girls to share tents with other girls—the adult female volunteers would be generally in a separate tent although you could put two unrelated female adults in a tent with girls. Unless you have huge tents that gets a little hard so we usually just have 2 girl tents and then however many adult tents for the women.

If your issue is whether the moms will look askance at a dad attending — I think not. Any woman that doesn’t encourage men to take an active role in their daughter’s life is really short sighted. Most of us are happy to have active engaged dads because we know that decreases the load on us and also increases the changes our daughters will find good life partners. Nothing irritates me more than guys who are happy to step up for their sons but won’t volunteer to help their daughters. Since many of us woman grew up without being taught those outdoor skills, it’s really helpful to have the dads willing to step up here. My only caveat is that sometimes the dads just want to do it for their daughters — the GS way is that the girls should do absolutely whatever possible, with just enough support for safety and to help them learn. Like the dads will just put up the tents and build the fire….no, that’s not “men’s work” in GS.

[Anonymous]

In about five years since my daughter did that, but when another dad came, he just had to sleep in his own tent, not an entirely different campsite!