I stayed home all summer long with just my 14-year-old sister when I was 12. There’s not much of an option when both your parents have to work and your nearest relative is a state away. Back then, home invasions were unheard of. But, I’m not sure anything could be different if I was 12 in 2007 instead of 1985.
My daughter moved to the woods in PA as she calls it. We insisted they get a home alarm system. In this day and age no where is safe any more, pitiful and scarey moreso, but true.
I’m also anti-working mothers I guess having not been one myself, part of the decay of society I think, that and when they dropped the dress codes in school. My mother was home when I came home from school, before the surge of working mothers started.