I used to take large rocks out to our backyard and pound them with a hammer to see what was inside. When my parents found out they made me put on safety goggles but the exploration continued. Good times.
This article talks about letting your kids live a little:
The book’s title is “deliberately provocative,” Tulley says, and it’s meant as both a guidebook for fretful parents who want to loosen up and a “call to action for over-protected children,” with instructions on safe ways to experiment with dangerous things. “We create a false impression in our minds that children are in peril all the time and everywhere, when in fact, according to the most recent studies, this is the safest time in history for children,” he says. “There couldn’t be a better time to be running around outside playing.”
I agree, however, I have to ask–with two parents working, who takes care of the kid when the garden gate gets slammed in your eye? (This because you are chasing someone in tag, who rightly thinks, aha, I’ll slow her down by slamming the gate behind me…Yes, this also happened to me. Hello major black eye.)
So I agree and disagree–it is a safe age, and our kids could run around outside but empty neighbourhoods with no one home aren’t super conducive to that. Kids may well be coddled these days but they also don’t raise themselves and many neighbourhoods are empty after school. That doesn’t feel safe to me.
________________________
Brigitte adds: I was chatting with someone last night who was saying how difficult it was for kids to find friends to play with outside, since everyone was at some kind of supervised and organized activity, not just outside like we used to be way back in the dark ages (aka the pre-1995 era). I refrained from asking him what connection, if any, he saw between that phenomenon and the fact that most adults, including him and his wife, work outside the home so much.
by 
In response to what Brigitte posted, I would like to respectfully disagree. I am currently staying home with my children (being on modified bed rest waiting for your 3rd little muffin will do that) and am lucky enough to be able to afford to take the whole year of mat leave, after which time I will return, regretfully, to work as a teacher.
I live near the school in which I teach, and know that there are oodles of children who live around here whose parents work Mon-Fri, some shift work, but few with NO regular weekend off-time. However, I have noticed that even on the weekends, I very rarely hear the laughter of any children outside excepting my own. I think the problem is more rooted in parenting decisions than in economic ones… although socio-economic status and ability do certainly play their role.
What I am trying to say, very inarticulately, is that if parents want their kids to play outside, making up their own games, learning to survive without the strict rules that school and organized activity place on them, then they will make it happen … no matter their schedules!
I know this is entirely NOT the point of this article but I got stuck on the phrase ‘this is the safest time in history for children’……that is unless you are a preborn child in which case, it is the most dangerous…..the highest risk location being your mother’s womb….too sad.