Why today's parents are more cautious when sending their children out to play?

Why can't my kids play by themselves in our neighborhood the way I did when I was a kid?

Webb Smith, Amateur Philosopher
Parents in today's society are much more fearful of the hazards that are outside our doors. The reasons for this fear is twofold. The first reason is mass media proliferation. The second is the breakdown of internal societal authorities like the church, schools and organizations that closely regulated and controlled behaviors of individuals.

Over then past 25 years or so news media effect on the societies' psyche has increased exponentially. Today's parents are much more cautious than their parent's generation, when deciding on how much unsupervised activities they allow their children to engage in, outside the home. This abundance of mass media has brought to light several heinous crimes like kidnapping and murder etc. against children playing outside their home unsupervised. These crimes, of course, happened in past but parents were not as informed about their occurrence. This lack of information allowed parents to feel more secure and be less cautious when granting their children freedom to play in thhe neighborhood.

Today, there probably isn't a larger number of sociopaths that would perpetrate these heinous crimes on children. However, with the breakdown of traditional societal structures these dangerous individuals are no longer kept in check, leading to the occurrence of greater numbers of these crimes. Presumably, past generations of sociopathsm and criminals may have been influenced by the moral teaching of the church, more fearful of the criminal justice system and quite posibly more fearful of societal organizations like a white collar criminal syndicate. These structures were more able to inflict punishment for transgressions perpretrated, especially on children. This punishment may have lead some to keep themselves in check. If they didn't the societal structures could inflict harsh consequences. It possible that an organization like a crime syndicate might have been empowered to dispose of any individual who might have committed these especially brutal crimes against the most vulnerable of society.

In summation there is not more sociopaths in today's society, just more information about about their crimes. Though the number of these individuals hasn't increased in the past 50 years, it possible that the number of crimes committed has increased due to the decrease in societal reguators. It is these two factors that have made this generation of parents cautious and protective when it comes to alowing their children autonomy while playing outside the home.