This discussion reminds me of a paper I had to read a few years back for a course on media sociology. Looked it up and found some interesting tidbits:
"children's lives are defined by the ways in which:
‘adults seek to impose or negotiate rules and limits, adjusted over time, aimed at reconciling children's freedom and security... The nature of the local environment and the availability of formal recreational services, ranging from parks to clubs, crucially affect how children negotiate their relationships and use of space outside the home' (Hill & Tisdall, 1997: 93)."
"There has been a gradual shift from children's leisure time spent outside (in the streets, woods or countryside) to that spent primarily at home, both reflecting and shaping cultural conceptions of childhood over the past half century. Interviews with parents about their own childhoods reveal a dominant image of a carefree childhood spent out of doors (Livingstone, 2002). Idealised and nostalgic though this may be, historians of childhood confirm a ‘shift from a life focused on the street to one focused on the home'. Further, ‘this was accompanied by a change in the social organisation of the home. Parents, and in particular fathers, became less remote and authoritarian, less the centre of attention when they were present' (Cunningham, 1995: 179)."
"James et al (1998) draw on Beck's (1992) theory of the risk society to examine how the spaces for young people's leisure activities have changed in meaning over the past half century. Ennew (1994) argues that British children's lives are ruled by ‘the idea of danger', which she sees as having taken a new twist at the beginning of the 1990s. One consequence of the growing fears regarding children's safety is a growth in adult management of children's leisure space and time. For example, Hillman et al (1990) found that while in 1971 80% of seven and eight year-old children walked to school on their own, by 1990 this figure had dropped to 9%.
Parents recall with nostalgia their own childhood freedoms to play out of doors, convinced that they cannot allow this for their children, and so the home is construed as the haven of safety. Fears of the outdoors are expressed by parents in urban and rural areas, and reports of harm to children on television and in the newspapers often figure in parents' accounts. The YPNM survey showed that only 11% of parents with children aged 6-17 say the streets where they live are ‘very safe' for their child, compared with 56% thinking this about the neighbourhood where they themselves were brought up."
The paper examines the role modern media has had on this shift from children playing in the streets to them playing inside our homes.
As someone living close to Amsterdam (Belgium), I can guarantee that even here, this fear of 'danger' outside, has certainly become more common than in the generations before. Even though I was still allowed to ride my bike to school, the difference in freedom as kids between me and my parents' generation is huge.
My grandmother would send their children out of the house for the entire day, to play on te streets. Since the house was no place for children to play in. We on the other hand, had to stay inside or in the yard and we were happy if we were allowed to go out of the vicinity of our backyard, on our own, from time to time.
For those interested, I uploaded the paper here:
http://docdro.id/QMac2yu