I don't want to derail the thread again, but I was thinking a little more about what some posters have been saying about leaving the children by themselves, and it occurred to me that it is really hard to judge without actually knowing the environment, the distances, etc. involved.
I can't comment on British customs then, but in the 90s, my parents and my siblings and I would go to a holiday cottage in Brittany for a few weeks - it was in a block of similar cottages with a communal outside area and every evening we would gather there to have our evening meal and the kids would then play in the surroundings until it got dark or so. At that point we'd be packed off to bed and the adults would stay outside socialising.
It seems a similar situation - maybe slightly older children in general, maybe different because we did know exactly where our parents were if we needed them and only had to come downstairs to the courtyard area. But it's hard to say that the Ocean Club wasn't maybe similar without having been there.
There were also British families who stayed at the cottages but I don't remember if they did the same. I only remember that we used to play with the English kids a lot and it involved a lot of sign language! I used to ask them questions in French and then say "yes? no?" And they would say "yes" and we would carry on 😂
I would like to go back there with my own kids now and see if it is still the same. But I do think there's a big difference between the freedom I had growing up (in the 90s/early 00s) and the freedom my kids have today. It may be partly location (London) though. At my DCs primary they are not allowed to walk themselves to school until Y5 but I'm sure that I walked myself to school far younger than that, albeit usually in a group with other children.
I just think it is tricky, because things do/have change/d, but it is hard to know how much and whether your memory is playing games with you.