It depends. In elementary school my younger brother and I took a public transit bus to school. It was out of necessity or my mother wouldn't have been able to w

It depends. In elementary school my younger brother and I took a public transit bus to school. It was out of necessity or my mother wouldn't have been able to work two jobs without us being latch key kids. We knew how to iron our clothes, cook breakfast on a stove and use a fry daddy for chicken nuggets and fries. Often times we were only latchkey kids in the morning and after school would walk to our aunts or grandmoms and wait for mom after work. We were largely unsupervised in Baltimore. Was it a good thing that we were autonomous and had the freedom to make mistakes without a guarding there to ensure they were responsible for our mistake..? Maybe. But I don't think any bad came from being a latchkey kid. IMO, SHTF in a kid's teenage years. I think it's way more important to be supervised in the pre-teen/teen years than a youner years. Simply because teenagers get into way more mischief that young kids.