I'm a Gen-Xer. I work with a lot of younger, fresh-out-of-college kids. I tell them about how it was as a kid in the 70's and 80s, but they generally reject it with disbelief. They think I'm lying when I tell them that my single mother would leave for work in the morning, and us kids would have absolutely zero supervision until she got home, usually around 7PM. Contacting her at work was basically impossible ("If you call me at work, someone better be dead!") In the summer months we roamed the streets with other neighborhood kids like a pack of wolves on BMX bikes - completely unsupervised.

I had a friend get shot (some dumb-ass kid was playing with his dad's gun in the woods). One of the neighborhood kids was a Boy Scout and knew enough to tourniquet his leg. Another kid knew how to drive his dad's pickup truck, so we threw him in the back and drove to the ER. No parents around (until they showed up at the ER).

There was also a time when some creepy older dude used to come down to the woods where we all hung out and rode our BMX bikes. He was probably in his mid-20s. It was totally stereotypical. He used to offer us beer and rides in his cool Trans Am. We all thought he was a creep so we stayed away. One of the kids told his dad, and shortly thereafter the dude stopped coming around. I assume some sort of "street justice" took place, but I'm not sure.

Kids would get in fist fights around lunchtime, then be best friends by dinnertime. We lit stuff on fire, built ramps and treehouses with wood we stole from the nearby construction site, and we drank water directly from random houses' garden hoses.

Anyway, all of this stuff (and A LOT more) happened all the time. All the neighborhood kids stuck together and looked out for one another, even if we didn't necessarily like one another. Parental involvement really wasn't an option. Almost all our parents worked. And the best part: it was awesome!