Don't take candy from a stranger. Razor blades in apples…
Unless it's a difference in degree, that alone is not what has changed.
To be sure we seem to be a more fearful society then we were then.
Let your kids play outside by themselves or walk to school, and get reported to Child Protective Services. It is very much a different world these days.
On the other hand, there are plenty of parents who completely neglect their kids. We don't want that either.
I'm just trying to process the irony of this entire discussion. American kids are over-protected because the media has created a culture of fear that terrible things are constantly happening to kids. Now you're going to flip that hysteria around and apply it to the parents.
I don't think childhood in the US is quite as bleak as these articles make it out to be. Probably has something to do with where your area is on the income scale. Upper-middle class kids are coddled and probably always have been. Working class kids can't be coddled because their parents are busy putting food on the table.
It's just that the media focuses pretty exclusively on the well-off, because that is the world journalists live in.