That's how I remember it as well. There were lots of reports in the 80's about the crisis of the latchkey kid, but we all just saw it as neither good nor bad, just... normal. I went to an expensive private prep high school, and most of the kid's parents were both working professionals. There were definitely kids who had broken homes, and kids who had well adjusted family lives, but pretty much everybody was going home at the end of the school day to an empty house for at least a few hours.