History Main / FreeRangeChildren

* [[{{Yotsubato}} Yotsuba]] can run all over town without anyone to watch her (though she ''does'' usually have either her dad or one of the neighbors in close proximity).

* A book called ''Free-Range Kids, How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)'' by Lenore Skenazy offers advice for parents regarding this concept.

* The parents of the seven main kids in {{Stephen King}}'s ''{{IT}}'' might as well be nonexistent, considering how they let their kids roam around unsupervised all day despite there being a killer preying on children loose in town. Of course, one of Pennywise's powers seems to be making the townsfolk indifferent, maybe even accepting, of his evils, so it might be justified.

* StandByMe has the [[FiveManBand Four Kid Band]] seemingly crossing county lines to see the dead body.

** King also wrote the novella ''The Body'', which became ''StandByMe'', listed below.

* Of course for ''{{Rugrats}}'' this is almost par for the course nearly every episode.

Generally [[EaglelandOsmosis in most modernized societies]], children usually don't stray off too far from home without some sort of older guidance. Children that do go off by themselves from home usually don't go very far, perhaps just down the streets to visit a friend, a nearby venue that helps children use their services, or go to school if its nearby. If the child was to wander off a farther distance, the guardians or the parents would (usually) be quite worried and would probably even punish the child when he or she comes back.

* ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha''. Nanoha's parents practically let her join the enforcement branch of an intergalatic government at age 9. And the government branch seems to have no problems sending out a pair of children to deal with an ArtifactOfDeath that's already killed hundreds of trained soldiers, which is guarded by a LadyOfWar with a ''flaming chain sword'', among other things. For backup, they get another 9-year-old.

* Of course, there is always lying to your parents about where you will be.
* Gah, ThisTroper was Free-Range by modern standards throughout TheSeventies.

* ''[[Anime/{{Ptitlei015gc004kw4}} Pokémon]]'': Ash is only 10 years old, yet he is given an incredibly powerful monster to keep as a companion and travel around a world inhabited by monsters and crooks with only the company of other children near his age. This may be [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in that this is an alternate world where the societal beliefs are much different than our own. But considering that this is a world populated by dangerous monsters yet none of the adults seem too concerned for the children's safety, this trope still applies.
** Keep in mind that most of these children have god-like monsters at their beck and call, giving them enough power to utterly destroy the world if they had half a mind to do so (the less said about why there are no "poke-Al Queda" the better, this is a children's series). We must all hope that none of them ever get dumped or depressed.

* ''MegaManStarForce'': In the second game, Geo goes running off to other countries. His mom doesn't seem to notice her son's absence. Lampshaded with one piece of dialogue:
--->Hope: Don't go too far from home.
--->... Did you just look at me funny?

** Arguably the TropeNamer for this, although in their context the children were being held in outdoor paddocks in preparation for slaughter, although this only took place in a [[DisContinuity ''Treehouse Of Horrors'' episode.]]

*** A Dutch correspondent living in America made a satirical article about that controversy. A thing like letting your child go across town with public transport or by bike is considered perfectly normal in some countries, even other 'first-world' countries.

A usual cause for this trope can be because MostWritersAreAdults. Compare AdultsAreUseless, which shows up in this Trope for some works and compare with ToyShip, which is when kids have relationships that wouldn't happen until they were several years older. Sometimes overlaps with ParentalAbandonment and WiseBeyondTheirYears, and frequently with low-age instances of the CompetenceZone. May involve {{Kid Hero}}es.

*''FullmetalAlchemist'': Ed gets into the military with all the dangerous adventures implied at the age of 12, but everybody is aware of this and many of the adults spend their time lampshading it and trying to protect him. Usually in vain.

* Subverted in ''{{Naruto}}'': the ninjas students actually have Adult Supervision when traveling into dangerous adventure.

*AvatarTheLastAirbender: Subverted. They haven't got any parents for the most part (Sokka and Katara's mother is dead, their father is off to war. Aang is a monk who was cryogenically frozen for a hundred years. Toph [[spoiler:is a runaway whose parents sent bounty hunters after her.]] Aside from Sokka, they're all excellent elementalists and he himself is a hunter and warrior. Finally, it's not like their homes were terribly safe to begin with, what with the world wide war ongoing.

* The Tiffany Aching-stories in the ''{{Discworld}}'' series justify this trope partially by rural setting and DeliberateValuesDissonance, and partially by the fact that Tiffany spends most of the time after the first book in the care of old witches who strongly believe in letting people solve their own problems regardless of age, whenever possible.

* In ''FinalFantasyXII'', there's a little girl in Rabanastre who likes to travel... a lot. While her family is stuck living in the slums, she's travelled all the way to the Salikawood and back again. Her dad seems to think it's funny.

***No she's not. In the episode ''Morpholomew'', she wants to enter a skateboarding competition, but can't since the youngest age category is 10 to 14. She may be 10 in the final movie, Leroy & Stitch, which takes place afther the series.