There's a pretty wide swath of normal in the middle of all of that. I hate to break it to you, but in the "good old days" - parents didn't "stop paying attenti

There's a pretty wide swath of normal in the middle of all of that. I hate to break it to you, but in the "good old days" - parents didn't "stop paying attention to kids at all". Half of the reason kids could run around "unsupervised" is because stay-at-home-mom was the norm for most women. Which meant if your kid was a mile away from home, you knew that someone else was still making sure they weren't getting into too much trouble and if they were you'd get a call letting you know what was going on. I remember more than one occasion where I knew there was a 50/50 chance I was going to be grounded before I walked in the door for dinner, despite "being unsupervised" for the entire day during the summer.