Are we truly better off for these type of crimes or is it because children are so protected nowadays that they are not available for kidnapping and the likes?
Although I don't know the answer, I have wondered this myself. If children are never alone, it is much harder to kidnap them. But of course that doesn't explain the decrease of violent crime in general. The most compelling explanation I've read to explain that is higher incarceration rates.
I consider myself between the supposed laissez faire parenting of yore and the supposed helicopter parenting of today. Honestly, my childhood in the 1980s did not resemble what you all discuss here. I never went places alone, and while my mom would let us wander at a park or swim at the pool, she was always there in the background. I wouldn't, however, call her a "helicopter" just because she wouldn't let us walk or bike to the park by ourselves at 8 years old. We had a lot of freedom as children, and past age 8 or 9, she didn't help with homework at all. Neither of my parents knew our grades until they saw our report cards.
I like the idea of letting them find their own way while still being nearby to help or supervise. I don't understand the parents who hover over their 5 year olds on the playground any more than I understand the parents who let their young kids (under 10 IMO) wander around unsupervised for hours and hours. These days we tend to demonize the former more than the latter - at least in the past few years it has become more popular to do so.
I see the crazy shit that my six year old concocts to do and I just can't fathom letting him loose in our semi-urban environment with traffic, either by himself or with a slightly older friend, but in the backyard by himself or with his friends? Hell yeah! (FYI, in these causes, hide the metal bats, though. Boys this age and metal bats unsupervised is a bad combo)
But I just had a friend (40 year old man with no kids nonetheless) excoriate me yesterday and label me as a helicopter parent because I went after my 11 month old who was wandering out of sight in the back yard. He's freaking 11 months old! He was also the one who thought that gates at stairs were crazy because "what's the worst that can happen to the baby, he falls and gets a concussion??" IMO that's the concept of free range parenting gone awry.
I think all this nonsense in the media about the new era of helicopter parenting is just that - nonsense. There has always been a wide variety of parenting styles in existence. Perhaps these days things trend too much towards over-supervision, and the government intrusion is certainly a concerning trend. Yet in the same breath, we yell at the state when they don't intervene and a child gets hurt in an unsafe household. With parenting as with governing, in general you can't win.
Plus this idealistic picture of the past is also colored by our own perceptions of the "days of yore" before smartphones, screens, etc. came into our lives. I'm not saying there isn't some validity, but we must also recognize what time does to our memories and perceptions and how we idealize the "good ole days" perhaps too much sometimes.