Childhood expert Karen Stagnitti is nostalgic about the free-range world of her early years. “We just left home for the day and turned up for food.” she says. Her memories echo those of many middle-aged parents and grandparents; Hilary Clinton wrote in an essay about her own upbringing, “We were so independent, were given so much freedom. But now it’s impossible to imagine giving that to a child today. It’s one of the great losses as a society.”

Such freedom is all but unknown to today’s children who are rarely out of adult sight lines. The reasons for this change in how we raise our offspring appear to coincide with a half century of eroding social capital and growing concerns about safety.