My 10-year-old son and his skinny little team mates ran on to the rugby pitch for an inter-school match.

When the opposition arrived my jaw dropped. They wore white strips and were huge and square. They were like fridges with feet.

Was I nervous? You bet. But my son survived that game and the dozens that followed. He also survived concussion, knee injuries and a snapped hamstring.

Professor Allyson Pollock, an expert in public health policy, has a similar experience of standing on rugby touchlines. One of her sons suffered three injuries before the age of 16. As a result, she stopped her younger boy from playing rugby when he reached the level it became a contact sport.

In her forthcoming book, Tackling Rugby: What Every Parent Should Know, she calls for an end to the sport being compulsory in schools and for an end to scrums and tackles. I understand where she is coming from. When she says she would have prevented her own sons from playing had she known the risks, I empathise.

But I wonder what her sons have to say about it. I know I might as well have tried to turn the tide as keep mine off the pitch. And if I had succeeded I would have broken his heart.

That's the trouble with parenting. We are all unqualified amateurs, well- meaning and prone to error. Some are too pushy, others too protective. Both types, we're told, cause damage to their children, according to two other new books.

In his, the controversial columnist Richard Littlejohn argues that our post-war parents had the right attitude: they just opened the door, let us out and left us to it.

So is he right? Do we need to turn back the clock for the sake of our children? Further, should we acknowledge that allowing children the freedom to take risks is a mark of good parenting?

Unsafe is how we see our world, isn't it? It's hardly surprising since we're bombarded on an hourly basis with news of savage inhumanity from abroad interspersed with reports of accidents and criminality here.

Since we are hard-wired to protect our young, sending them out to play unsupervised would seem like gross negligence. The hardest thing a parent can do is to allow a child to take risk. So why did I allow mine on to a rubgy pitch even after he qualified as one of the one in six who sustains serious injury?

I did so because, for him, the advantages far exceeded the dangers.

Team sport is a great training for life. It teaches trust, forges friendships and offers challenges. Its players learn how to identify their weaknesses and strengths, how to rise above defeat and sometimes enjoy the elation of capturing the crown. Besides, which activity or sport carries no risk? Think of skate-boarding, roller blading, horse riding, and boxing.

Like most kids, mine never opened a gate that could be jumped and thought trees and walls existed for climbing.

If I sound like I was a gung-ho parent, believe me I wasn't. If my children moved out of arms reach, I worried. Once they were out of sight, I imagined all sorts of disasters befalling them. To this day I cannot rest if I know either of them is in the air or driving a long distance.

Fearfulness descended on me in the delivery suite of the maternity hospital and never departed. It's a complaint common to many mothers.

My own mother was either immune to it or her generation was made of sterner stuff. She reared us like outdoor pets. Home was where we ate and slept. In his book Littlejohn's Lost World, Richard Littlejohn writes about, "the days before 'elf and safety, when children ran wild and free".

Like him, I was one such. I have a photograph of my seven-year-old self with my "gang" snapped at the wall of a recently demolished school. What were we doing? Exploring? Building a den? Our daily entertainment involved fishing for minnows, cycling for miles, making camp fires, raiding orchards. It was fun.

Why didn't I automatically extend that freedom to my children? Why did I always go with them?

Was it partly because I remembered the near misses (my sister walking the wall of a soaring viaduct)? And how, one day, I hurtled down a country lane on my bicycle to collide with a speeding newspaper van. I regained consciousness as the ambulance arrived.

And that I think is another principal difference: traffic.

The Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh had an exhibition a couple of years ago that showed film of Edinburgh children in the 1950s or early 1960s playing street games.

It simply would not be possible in most of the city today. There are parks but most parents wouldn't feel safe allowing their children to play in them unsupervised.

And, yes, it includes stranger danger. Statistics tell us the greatest threat to children stems from friends and acquaintances; family even. The creepy man in the bushes is said to be as rare today as when I was a child. But he did exist.

The difference was we knew him. And, like a flock of geese, every adult would have had an eye to our safety and his whereabouts. It gave parents a safety net. There are few communities like that today.

No. For most children outside is supervised. And for the children of so called "snow-plough parents", free time means more tuition.

Their parents see them as entrants in a global competition for high grades and good universities so they are treated to extra music and art, sports coaching and some academic tuition. In another new book, You Are Not Special, teacher David McCullough warns pushy parents that cramming their children's day is often counter-productive. In place of independence and confidence, he says, it breeds anxiety and uncertainty.

When McCullough outlined his concerns in a school graduation speech it attracted 2.5 million internet hits.

He contends that, to grow effectively, each of us needs the freedom to find our own way. And that is where I think team sport plays its part (if that's what the child chooses), whether it is shinty, football, netball or rugby.

Protective, risk-averse, fearful parents can certainly hold their children back. Pushy parents can damage theirs too.

The injuries may not show in bruises and broken bones but it is worth remembering that one British university student in 10 suffers mental health problems.

I came across a line in The Prophet by Kalhil Gibrain that I wish I'd read when my children were babies. He wrote about parents: "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth." In other words, we are the past, they the future.

We don't own our children; it's just our job to care for them. I now believe that involves allowing them to take some risks. So if I had my time again I'd try to find a way to open the door and set them free.