[bundze]

I grew up in the former Eastern bloc (Poland) in a small town and we had this sort of free-range parenting there. When I was around 9 or 10 I would spend my whole days playing outside with the other kids from the neighborhood, especially in the summer. Sort of like the "Bullerbyn children" in Astrid Lindgren's book. Sometimes one of us was sent on an errand (like to a local shop) and others went along to keep company. There were 5 of us hanging out regularly and most of us lived in two working parent households except one who had a SAH mother and another who was raised by a working single mother. So I don't think the lack of SAH moms is a factor here. Also, my parents are not religious and there definitely was no faith-based community. My parents actually didn't know that well the parents of other kids, we kids just met each other somehow in the area or were introduced by other kids that we knew. I think it was rather a combination of living in a safe neighborhood - suburb with low traffic (even now Poland has less cars per capita than US https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle...) and people being just less paranoid back then. Also, the societal expectations towards children have shifted in the recent years, now people often try to micromanage their children's time and provide them with too many after-school activities so kids don't have time to just hang around.

[m348e912]

Interesting, thanks for the insight. You're right, you never see kids just hanging out anymore. Like you said, it's more organized and micromanaged.