I have no doubt that those years weren't the best for everybody, but society as a whole was much more simple then and I think better. I was born in 1960 and had a great childhood. I think everything changed in the late 1970's and early 1980's when we began to see several highly publicized kidnappings and more child abductions off the streets by pedophiles. Until the mid 1970's you just never heard about these things happening then all of a sudden parents started refusing to let their kids out to play. I played and wandered around my neighborhood from the age of 5, and by the time my first was born in 1990, we barely let them out of our sight.
We had a very famous kidnapping in my town in 1993 of a young girl named Polly Klaas. She was having a slumber party with 2 other girls and a man came into her bedroom window in the middle of the night, took Polly, raped and killed her. That one kidnapping changed parents outlook forever and our kids are paying the price with less freedom. Yes they're safe, but at what cost? They don't know how to be independent and are afraid to take risks of any kind.