“I don’t feel you can be a parent and not feel nervous,” said Lenore Skenazy, whose recent book, “Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry,” looks at parental fears and statistical realities. “But we don’t do them a service by going to the worst-case scenario in your mind and acting accordingly. Organizing your life around the images of Etan Patz and Jaycee Dugard negates the joy you had walking to school as a kid or even the sense that you could take care of yourself.”

Denise Schipani, a writer in Huntington Station, N.Y., recently added a post on her blog, Confessions of a Mean Mommy, entitled “The Bus Stop Conundrum.” Ms. Schipani herself grew up in an era when “we had a life outside the house that had nothing to do with our parents,” she said. “Kids used to do more things on their own because they could. No one was saying, ‘not until you’re 10 or 12.’ But on our street, people drive fast and my kids expect me to wait with them for the school bus.” So do other mothers. “How long do I have to do this? What are the rules?”

The federally funded Safe Routes to School program has been working with communities to address problems that impede children from walking or biking to school. Particularly since last summer, when gas prices rose and districts began cutting budgets, some districts have been turning to “the walking school bus,” where parent volunteers walk groups of children to school.

But communal will around this issue has not yet arrived in many places. In Columbus, Miss., Lori Pierce would like her daughters, 6 and 8, to walk the mile to school by the end of the year. “They want to walk,” she said. “They have scooters.” But she and the girls face obstacles. Mrs. Pierce must teach them the rules of a busy street, have officials install some sidewalks and urge the school to hire a crossing guard.

And Mrs. Pierce faces another obstacle to becoming a free-range mother: public opinion.

Last spring, her son, 10, announced he wanted to walk to soccer practice rather than be driven, a distance of about a mile. Several people who saw the boy walking alone called 911. A police officer stopped him, drove him the rest of the way and then reprimanded Mrs. Pierce. According to local news reports, the officer told Mrs. Pierce that if anything untoward had happened to the boy, she could have been charged with child endangerment. Many felt the officer acted appropriately and that Mrs. Pierce had put her child at risk.