Why weren't parents in the past "helicopter parents"?

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I grew up in the seventies and eighties. I lived out in the country and by the agent of 9 or 10 I would ride it around the country roads, some of them very busy and would often go to a corner gas station 3-4 miles away. Just a few years older than that and a friend and I would ride our bikes to my aunt and uncle's house in town, stow our bikes there and take a city bus up to the "mall" and play video games in the arcade for hours.

Essentially, I would be gone all day very often and my Mom had no idea where I was with no way of getting a hold of me. She was definitely not sitting at home worrying about me and instead would go on about her business without skipping a beat.

My wife grew up in a large city and....the same thing. She'd be gone with friends around the neighborhood for most of the day during the summer, weekends, and her parents had no idea where she was.

I've NEVER talked with anyone my age or older that had a parent who shut them in the house afraid for their child to be out and about.

Why, why is it now, so different? I would have to think parents loved their kids in generations past as much as parents love their kids now.

I'm a parent. While it's theoretically possible for my kids to walk down to a store some distance away or ride bikes down the road, they never have. My wife and I are too fearful that something will happen to them. I'm saddened that this is the case.

Just a guess, but sometime around 1970, there seems to have been a sharp increase in the frequency of reported child abductions, rapes, and murders receiving national attention. Whether or not the frequency in the actual incidents increased as well, I don't know.

Back in 1967, a Michigan girl was abducted, raped, and murdered by an escapee from an upstate mental hospital. He was caught in Texas. It made national news. I guess the people who run the Media realized that even if a violent crime happened on the other side of the continent, it would still draw interest, thus selling more papers and airtime. It seemed to take just a few years before I noticed that the local newspapers had stories on violent crimes against children that occurred hundreds or thousands of miles away. By the 1980s, even stories on suspected child abuse and neglect were making headlines.

So, to make a long story short, with more news about violence against children, parents became more concerned for their safety.

Couple this with the need for a STEM degree becoming more important after the rate of assembly-line jobs going overseas started accelerating in the mid-1970s, it seems that parents started to realize that they had to really take charge of almost every aspect of their children's lives to make sure that they stayed safe and made it into college.

Well ... some parents, anyway ...

well helicopters weren't really invented until the 1860s so it was kinda hard to be one before then

Interesting. That could be it. I was already out of high school when the abduction of Jacob Wetterling in my home state occurred, but I remember everyone was horrified and haunted by it as was I. He was abducted on a rural road outside of a small town. I thought back to all the many years that I rode my bike on similar rural roads in my home town and remember thinking: "That could have happened to me when I was a kid." and "If someone can grab a kid on a road by a small sleepy town in a close knit community, someone can grab a kid anywhere at any time."

The mass media loves to create moral panic. Just a few days ago I read that someone in Toronto got West Nile Virus and the article reminded us once again why mosquito bites are something to be terrified of instead of just an annoyance. I replied saying how many people die from traffic accidents and other diseases every day and they don't care, but one person gets WNV and suddenly we have to go to excruciating lengths to keep mosquitoes from breeding.

The media has made parents so deeply afraid their kids will be the next victims of pedophiles they'd rather their kids indoors and not have any independence or a real life at all. And then their kids grow obese from not exercising and have no clue how to take care of themselves by the time they're adults.

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago in the 50s and 60s. Our house was NEVER locked. We had milk delivered to our front door. The kids in the neighborhood played all up and down the block...outside. I biked and walked all over town. I biked to the other side of town to go swimming in the public pool. I couldn't stand to be monitored 24/7 like kids are today.

I don't think there was as much crime of any kind at that time. Maybe I just didn't notice, but no one in my family, friends or school was worried about it.

I believe the case of Etan Patz, a six year old child who disappeared in New York City in 1978, started this tend of parents being more vigilant about their kids. Etan was catching the bus for his first day of first grade. No body was ever found; but he is assumed to have been murdered.

Then there was the "milk carton" campaign, where photos of missing kids were superimposed on milk cartons.

Even when I was about 6 years old, I would go out in the morning, and come back home for dinner. I never had to tell my parents where I was. And I mean I was 6 years old. While I didn't live in the "inner city," I live in an area which was more urban than suburban. I grew up in Rego Park, Queens, New York City, primarily.