Really good points. Yes, I don't think it's always coming from the kid's parents. There's a lot of pressure from other parents. If you decide for yourself that you're going to have a free range kid and give them a 70s-style childhood where they practice their own agency from an early age and get to grow up learning their own limits and having adventures, then at some point some other worrying, busybody person is going to see your kid by themselves and call the police or CPS or whatever.

It's a herd thing. We have difficulty choosing to do anything drastically differently from the rest of society, and raising children involves another being who doesn't necessarily have freedom to consent so society gets even more involved if what you are doing is deviant. But the drift of society has caused the norm to be something that decades ago would have been considered highly deviant. If you were a hovering parent like is common today in the 60s or 70s, you'd be an absolute freak and considered abusive. But today the opposite is true.

I'm glad you mentioned that the kids are sometimes the ones who make the choice themselves. I guess we're putting so much fear around them that it's making them decide the wisest course of action is to do what is normal and practiced by all their peers, be in constant sight of their parents. Really a shame.