Fellow younger Gen-Xer here, when I was growing up this trajectory was already clearly starting.

My parents were oldschool Italian immigrants and let me run wild, often accompanied by a relatively small subset of neighborhood kids whose parents also didn't worry.

But there were already plenty of boomers panicking about child molesters reported in the news, locking their kids up inside. Then as minorities started moving into the predominantly white racist midwestern neighborhood, the fears went into overdrive.