Well, I grew up in a small town of 20000 in Virginia, and I don't think things are, or were, like this at all. When I go home, I see children arrive at the YMCA to play basketball unaccompanied. They also arrive at the library alone. When I worked at the town pool as recently as 5 years ago, our most common swimmers were kids who showed up alone on their bikes or skateboards. Thinking back about 10-15 years ago when I was younger, I'd walk the 30 minutes to school alone if I didn't want to ride the bus. My younger brothers did likewise. The four of us would have firework battles in the yard; in hindsight perhaps someone should have come out to discourage us on that last activity. In the early 2000s, at age 7-10, I would spend most summer days down by the creek with a friend or two. We'd set off by bike after summer swim team in mornings, take our lunches, and spend most of the day there.
I guess that's all a decade in the past, but I would wager that it's media portrayal that's more likely to have done most of the recent changing, not crazy people. There have always been crazy people, but it seems like they all organized to abuse CPS together suddenly over the last 10 years.
20000 is a small town for you? I guess I've never lived in a small town, only in tiny villages between 300-900 people or cities of 100000+ but my nearest town is ~20000 and I've always considered it pretty large with lots of disconnected communities and areas.
I guess that's all a decade in the past, but I would wager that it's media portrayal that's more likely to have done most of the recent changing, not crazy people. There have always been crazy people, but it seems like they all organized to abuse CPS together suddenly over the last 10 years.