Those “good ole days” don’t exist any longer ... because of the extreme danger to kids in the day we live in. There are way too many out there now just looking to grab kids at the first chance they have.
I had this very conversation with my Dad the other day.
His theory is that there aren't any more perverts than there were back in the "good old days". He thinks that they've been emboldened by talking to others like themselves (for instance, on the internet) AND further emboldened by the fact that repercussions are currently limited.
He said that if a person got caught diddling with kids back when he was a child, that person more likely than not would be "taken care of" (his words, not mine) and the local cops would take a pretty laissez faire attitude towards it.
Sez me, that makes sense. If a person knew that they were going to get offed, instead of patted on the head and told that they were the real victim by a sympathetic headshrinker .... Behavior would be modified, rapidly.
Makes as much sense as anything. Truly we are in a Brave New World.
I started Kindergarten in 1947 in a small Iowa town (Laurens...no need for secrecy). We lived in a neighborhood where all the "Moms" knew each other, had coffees together and kept up with the radio soap operas. One or more members of this group of moms always knew where us kids were and what we were up to at any given time and kept the others up-to-date.
If any of us did something bad, it instantly became a bulletin across the whole "mom network" and you were in trouble when you got back home regardless of who saw it.
A stranger in the neighborhood would set off a chain of calls until someone identified them (he's my brother-in-law, etc.) or he remained under "neighborhood recon" until he left.
* (door-to-door salesmen did not fare well in the old neighborhood)
I wish I could post and say how wrong you are {for the sake of our kids and this nation} but I can only agree. I was born in the late 1950's and when I was about seven years old in 1964 I walked to school about 4 blocks away or rode my bike. We played outdoors after school and in the summer being gone several hours wasn't unusual. At 13 I was left on the lake in the summer to camp and fish. My dad came in ever day or two with some ice and food to check on me. I has a rifle, boat, motor, and the dog. Life was good :>} It was the same way he had grown up.
By the time I was 16 things were changing. Downtown where I would go to watch a movie was becoming unsafe especially at night. Camping out was starting to get dangerous enough to have a firearm. It wasn't that I had suddenly become more aware of danger but rather our nation and communities changed. I grew up much like my dad did and dad grew up on the wrong side of town so to speak. But even where dad grew up in the 1930's he and his siblings were safe.
There are predators out there today who have no fear of any punishment from our judicial system nor retribution from a group of men taking matters into their own hands to maintain community standards.
As kids we knew who we could talk too and who not to talk too. The parents knew the kids or they found out fast {by asking their kids} who someone was.
I would be cautious even in rural areas today. Society standards of allowed behavior and even moral standards have been lowered. I pains me to say this is not the nation I nor my parents grew up in. Innocence in that respect has been lost and it will take a major fight to restore it. A parents duty is to protect their kids from harm. IF someone had grabbed and taken their kids on one of their walks home they would be screaming bloody murder that the cops were not doing their job protecting them. GOD gave us minds to use and common sense. Common sense says in these times the kids were too young for that. But common sense is not law.
I was paranoid but there is probably a greater chance of being in a car accident. I wish I had moved to a small town where everyone knew everyone. My niece was in 1st or 2nd grade when walking home from school a guy down the street exposed himself from his living room window. Location, location, location.
I don't believe the threat is any greater now than before, it's just with the advent of 24/7 news channels every single occurrence is sensationalized.