Growing up myself in the "stay out until the streetlights are on" era, there were certain houses we were told to stay around from because of "funny old men." Of course we took this as an open invitation to throw rocks, snowballs and eggs at these houses at every opportunity.
The big difference between then and now is that there is simply so much to do indoors. When I was a kid, there was very little TV (only about six channels and three of them you had to keep messing around with the rabbit ears to receive) and so us kids got underfoot. SO naturally our parents told us to get outdoors and stay out until dinnertime. It was today's equivalent of sending the kids to the rec room to play Nintendo or upstairs to surf the web until dinnertime.
Of course parents want to deflect their neglect of their children so they invent these silly reasons as "the pervert living down the street" as an excuse for having their kids play video games all day and watching hours and hours of endless, mindless television.
You can bet that if we didn't have all these entertainment that today's parents would kick their kids outdoors just like their parents did with them.
That's a good point you bring up there.
I also wonder how much of it may have to do with the incredible amount of development today as compared to just 20 years ago. To truly live out "in the woods" these days, you have to be pretty far away from the city.
With private developments and strips malls increasingly taking up every possible inch of space in the near suburbs and heavy traffic on every street, there's just not as much room for the kids to run around and play games anymore.
We’re raising a generation of very fearful children. You shouldn’t teach your child to be fearful. Teach them to be smart, yes, but not fearful.