One of the things I liked best about the town we moved to is that when we were looking for houses I happened to go check out a listing around the time school got out and saw probably 15 different elementary aged kids walking home from school.

I don't think childhood in the US is quite as bleak as these articles make it out to be. Probably has something to do with where your area is on the income scale. Upper-middle class kids are coddled and probably always have been. Working class kids can't be coddled because their parents are busy putting food on the table.

It's just that the media focuses pretty exclusively on the well-off, because that is the world journalists live in.