I think this may have more to do with the internet and mass communication and entertainment. We were poor when I was a kid in the late 70s and 80s ... we had no internet and we really had no TV because we had no cable and my parents couldn't afford much. We also had no books or reading material in the house. So when you're a kid left with nothing to do, read, or watch at home, you naturally go wandering around looking for things to do elsewhere. I was about 7 or 8 when I started roaming around my neighbourhood, 10 by the time I went around my entire town and by 12 I was making treks into the woods and even overnight camping with me and my friends.

I'm Indigenous Canadian and to my parents it was all natural. Dad told us stories of learning to hunt and trap with his father at about 8 to 10 and then by the time he was 12, he was on his own. At 14 he was making money as a guide for visiting hunters from southern Ontario and the US. By 16, he was more or less living on his own and had become his own man.