No, what I'm saying was that when I was a kid, I could expect to go out in my neighborhood (I grew up mostly in Hazelwood), either alone or with my similar-aged friends, and be completely out of the sight of my parents, whether it was a block or a mile away, for hours at a time, and neither I nor my parents were worried about it, and no one was being neglectful or endangered. Today, for no quantifiable reason I can discern, many people seem to THINK that kind of behavior is much more dangerous now than it was in the 70s. I just don't see what has changed between then and now.
I don't have kids of my own so far, but plenty of our friends have kids and I know very few parents of kids under 12 that will even let them out of their sight. Where I live now is a squeaky-clean suburban-style neighborhood that happens to have one or more cops living on just about every street, judging by the number of drive-home patrol cars you see parked in driveways. There's practically NO threat to kids, even traffic is generally subdued. But like I said, the parents I know won't even let their kids go outside in the un-fenced yard without going outside with them to watch them constantly.... much less let them walk alone a few streets over to the community park (with swingsets, basketball courts, etc.).
I don't see a lot of kids playing outside, period, really. As a society we seem to have all become so paranoid that children either don't interact with other kids outside of school, or they only do it within the strict parameters of highly-structured and heavily parent-attended activities. I used to get on my bike, ride a few streets over to my friend's house and knock on his door. He would come out and get on his bike, and we would ride all over the neighborhood, go to some other kids' houses, or run around in the woods and so forth, and no parents were following our every move, and we were just fine. I don't know why kids today can't also be allowed to do the same thing without this panic about their safety.
