@kc5jim Yep. Most of us were encouraged to "go out and play" and there were times I heard others' parents say "I don't even want to see you until supper time". BUT, if you weren't there AT supper time, you got yelled at and punished! AND if the other kids said you went x-blocks too far away and your parents got wind of that, you got yelled at and punished!

No self-respecting parent back then would let their darlings out of their sight without a big performative thing, often yelling to the kid out the window or across the yard, with stated conditions in triplicate. And some kids had a reputation for never getting much permission (there were helicopter parents even back in the 70s). They did the whole yelling/conditions/promising production over and over again, but that's how we got our agency to "roam freely".