The notion that children are not allowed to play outside within a couple of blocks of their home seems like a mass delusion to me.
However, I'm GenX and having all my friends and I roam the neighborhood from the time we got out of school until our parents got home from work with no supervision seems perfectly normal.
"Come home when the street lights come on" and television PSAs asking "It's nine o'clock, do you know where your children are?" were the norm in the 70's.
Maybe it's a local thing. I often see random kids roaming on the streets.
I first became aware of how insane things could be when a single mother was arrested for allowing her child to play at the park a couple of blocks from their home while she was working.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arreste...