Just to throw in my own 2 cents' worth, I walked the 6 blocks to kindergarten by myself at age 5, and the half mile to first grade at age 6 --- that was 56 years ago.
My own boys (late 20th century) were at large over the whole neighborhood ---there was a nice tiny urban-slightly-wild place where they could catch crawdads, build dams and swing on a rope across the stream--- but it did attract police attention during the school day (we were homeschoolers). Several times I had a friendly cop return one of them to the door. I finally printed ID cards for them that stated that they were homeschooled children who were, with parental permission, going to or from an educational activity by themselves. That way they could go to the Public Library or the Hands-On Museum or a music lession, without me having to lead them by the hand.
One or the other of them walked their blind grandfather to the Senior Center for lunch every day, crossing two fairly major streets. They were known and looked on smilingly in the neighborhood.
I guess these days they call them "Free-Range Kids." e just considered it "unremarkable normal childhood."
We all have our “way back when” stories. I have SOOO many cherished memories. 79 years ago, I walked the mile to a two room school house alone. School started promptly at 8 but finished whenever our teacher completed what she had laid out for the day, so many days in the winter I walked home in darkness.
One day when I was 3-4 mother missed me and after a frantic search, found me sound asleep sitting on the lower “little hole” resting my head on the higher “big boys” hole of our outhouse.