One hundred seventy-nine consecutive children with Hodgkin's disease seen at Stanford University Medical Center between the years 1961-1980 have been analyzed for survival and freedom-from-relapse as a function of clinical versus laparotomy staging as well as primary treatment modalities. Of laparotomy-staged patients, 86% are alive at 10 years after primary radiation with chemotherapy reserved for relapse, as compared with 90% managed by planned combined modality therapy (p = 0.62). Patients who were clinically staged and managed with primary radiation have only a 69% survival (p = 0.05). A favorable subgroup of patients with lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin's disease experienced a low relapse rate regardless of primary treatment modality. Patterns of relapse in clinically staged patients reflect understaging, with most relapses in distant, nonirradiated sites, whereas the less frequent relapses in laparotomy-staged patients usually reflect regional recurrence. It is concluded that laparotomy staging is highly desirable to allow greatest flexibility in optimizing individual therapy. Routine combined modality treatment for all patients would overtreat certain favorable subgroups, who can be managed more conservatively as long as the information derived from surgical staging is available. For young children, in whom bone growth issues are paramount, combined modality treatment using low-dose radiation is recommended. For older children and adolescents, where concerns over chemotherapy-related leukemogenesis and infertility are more important than height considerations, radiation alone may be used for stages I-IIIA with equal overall success.