Not sure the age group of the kids you have / hang out with, but I get the sense that this is changing with the kids who are preschoolers today.
I see a lot of kids out on balance bikes. My kid was playing with his stomp rocket in the local elementary school playground, and a little girl (about 5) - unattended, on a bike, I assume her mom was a couple hundred yards behind - came up to him and said "I've got a stomp rocket at home too, but my house is being renovated so we're living in a hotel." Playgrounds today are made to be much more about sensory experiences - there's a lot more water play, and places for free play like castle theaters, and plain logs or rocks or other obstacles to climb on. It's more typical for parents to go sit on a bench 50 feet away rather than hovering right over the kid.
Much of this is a very deliberate rejection of post-9/11 parenting standards, and may be generational as well. I think it started to change around 2015-2017; I remember there were articles on HN about a free-range parenting movement in Salt Lake City, or new playgrounds specifically designed to be dangerous in NYC. Also the people having kids now are early/mid-Millenials, while the parents of Zoomers are generally Gen-Xers, who were themselves termed the latchkey/TV-dinner generation. There may also be some survivorship bias where all the kids whose parents never let them do anything themselves failed to launch and have kids of their own, while those who did have kids often had fond memories of independent free play.
I see a lot of kids out on balance bikes. My kid was playing with his stomp rocket in the local elementary school playground, and a little girl (about 5) - unattended, on a bike, I assume her mom was a couple hundred yards behind - came up to him and said "I've got a stomp rocket at home too, but my house is being renovated so we're living in a hotel." Playgrounds today are made to be much more about sensory experiences - there's a lot more water play, and places for free play like castle theaters, and plain logs or rocks or other obstacles to climb on. It's more typical for parents to go sit on a bench 50 feet away rather than hovering right over the kid.
Much of this is a very deliberate rejection of post-9/11 parenting standards, and may be generational as well. I think it started to change around 2015-2017; I remember there were articles on HN about a free-range parenting movement in Salt Lake City, or new playgrounds specifically designed to be dangerous in NYC. Also the people having kids now are early/mid-Millenials, while the parents of Zoomers are generally Gen-Xers, who were themselves termed the latchkey/TV-dinner generation. There may also be some survivorship bias where all the kids whose parents never let them do anything themselves failed to launch and have kids of their own, while those who did have kids often had fond memories of independent free play.