It's interesting. On the one hand, our society is content push its children into situations where the maturity needed to cope with the stress levels is typically beyond their years. Yet on the other hand, we infantilize them. For example, parents often don't let 8- or 9-year-old kids walk home from school alone, play outside alone, or go to the park alone out of an unjustified fear of stranger abductions.
That's not the only fear. I regularly read about child protective services "abducting" children because they were not being supervised as closely as some adult thought they should be. For example, there is a recent story "Maryland family under investigation for letting their kids walk home alone".
