I grew up basically latch-key, and so were most of my friends. Once I hit 11 years old I was home without my parents after school. My sister was only 8 or 9. She hated it. Too young.
My parents didn’t put pressure on us to get good grades. We were basically trusted by our parents, and trustworthy. Overall, we were good kids.
My sister feels she was a little neglected and would have been better off with more structure and expectations. I think a little more structure regarding schoolwork might have been good for me, but what would have been even better for my learning is school starting at 9:30 instead of the crack of dawn. I’m dead serious. Also, too much pressure and I would have been very very miserable.
Overall, I much prefer having a parent who leans towards letting their kids have more freedom than being a hovering parent. Although, I think it’s extremely important the parent is available.
I think very strict parents with harsh punishment for children is a bad thing. So many of those kids go wild when out of the sight of their parents. But punishment is really a different topic than being a helicopter I guess.
I think childhood should be fun and time to absorb all the information possible. I think the biggest influence on how kids will turn out as adults is the example set by their parents. There are exceptions, but mostly that’s what I think.