I was a big-time “free ranger” going far and wide.:-)
I was also. No harm in it.
However, my comment was really meant to poke fun at the headline. I think we are supposed to express outrage at children who walk unattended, but the headline specifies “free range parents” — so it sounds like the government doesn’t even like parents who walk around unattended!
I had a Mayberry RFD lifestyle growing up. And that was in the late Sixties and early Seventies. My buddies and I road our bikes everywhere, walked or road bikes to our favorite fishing holes, played sandlot baseball, etc and, the horror, built stuff with Dad and went fishing with Dad.
Yet, there are those who claim that Mayberry RFD is fiction and never really existed.
I dare say that lifestyle still exists in a lot of flyover country.
I too was a big time free ranger! I walked a half mile to school in Iowa (Des Moines) when I was 5 years old, even in winter. We played outside after school and in the summer without adult supervision. When I was 8 I was free to ride my bicycle far and wide without adult supervision. Obviously the leftist nanny-staters have learned to use child protection services to their advantage in wrecking control on the family.
Note, my parents were ‘controlling’. Others had much more ‘free ranger freedom’ than I had.