When my wife and I were kids this was normal now it is abuse?

[1monster]

72. I live in Florida where people come for sun, sand, and sea. Criminals come too.

Growing up in Pennsylvania, it always seemed that the worst criminals from Pennsylvania were caught in Florida.

So I kept my son close and watched out for the neighbor kids too.

But it isn't just current times and Florida. In 1965, six year old Kathy Ann Shea from Tyrone, PA, 25 miles from where I lived, disappeared from the few blocks between her home and her school. I have memories of people searching the corn and wheat fields on farms where I lived. No trace of the child was ever found. This was small town rural America where most everyone knew everyone else.

So I kept my son close and safe for those and other reasons I won't go into. But keeping him safe tended to curb his learning independence and self reliance. (Part of that is personality and I'm not sure he would have developed that independent self reliance had things been different.)

I don't have an answer. Life in our modern world has its dangers, but so were there dangers in the past when children were allowed to wander a bit more freely.