Dude (ma'am?) I had kids in the 90s and 2000s and was never a helicopter parent and though I do agree with your damned if you do, damned if you don't, the world is judgemental as fuck, that over-involved parenting style is not harmless either. My kids were in a group of kids at school and even in HIGHSCHOOL some of those parents tracked their kids everywhere they went. It's a level of surveillance I cannot imagine imposing. But it wasn't all the kids ever. The surveilled kids did not do well adjusting to freedom, and didn't trust their parents much. I don't think it hurts little kids as much as long as you have a plan to build their independence before high school, which these parents did not.

It is true here that elementary school won't let kids be walkers now without an adult or teenage sibling to walk with them at dismissal. You can arrange a walk-pooling group but it has to have a grownup. From the bus they don't though, can just walk home.

The kids across the street from us still run in the yard by themselves and run up the street to visit their friends, there are I'd say 8 year olds riding bikes alone & in groups, we do not live in an HOA or gated anything just in a neighborhood in the city. Though I obviously don't know if the bike kids are air-tagged or something, they look like when I was little just fewer of them now.