Of course, in the good/bad old days, sometimes kids just died. My wife talks fondly of free-roaming LA in the 70s, and parenthetically mentions the kid that got

Of course, in the good/bad old days, sometimes kids just died. My wife talks fondly of free-roaming LA in the 70s, and parenthetically mentions the kid that got molested and the other one that got run over by a car. In general, in the West at least, folks had bigger families and started earlier (just make a new one!). A friend of ours from rural China (Dalian province, I think) talked about how all the kids would go out by themselves and teach each other how to swim in the river. We expressed some admiration for that, and she said, "oh, I don't know - a few kids drowned every year". Every year! In my experience, people who go on about 'helicopter parents' are awfully brave with the welfare of other people's kids. We're pretty free-roam, but I spent a lot of time worrying about traffic when my youngest was the height that he could be invisible before stepping out from behind a car. Maybe I'd be more relaxed about this if, for instance, someone blasting through inner-city streets in a SUV while texting, was legally treated as a potential murderer (or an actual one if things go badly).