Last week I wrote about a relatively new concept recommending a 9-to-5 school day for American children. “Can your 10-year-old self even imagine the awfulness?” I asked. The idea was promoted by The Center for American Progress in a recent report titled “Workin’ 9-to-5.”

The week after the center’s report, the New York Times featured an entirely different and competing concept, epitomized by Mike Lanza’s “Playborhoods,” where kids are free to play in and around their neighborhoods without adult supervision. You know, the old-fashioned way.

I expected some negative feedback for expressing my belief that a 9-to-5 school day is not in children’s best interest, but I guessed incorrectly about why people would disagree with me.

I anticipated that my flexible work schedule and the fact that I might not understand, in a firsthand way, the burden of finding and paying for after-school childcare, would be an issue. For the most part, I have the luxury of choosing whether or not I’m home when my children get home from school.

But readers who disagreed with me did so not because of these things, but because they truly believe a 9-to-5 school day would be good for kids. That surprised me.

Readers suggested that a longer school day would allow for more art, music, recess and academics. They said that a longer school day would keep kids with unstable home lives occupied and out of trouble. And a few readers even stated that a longer school day would help us keep pace with other countries who are out-performing the United States in science and math.

Again, my 10-year-old self wept.

The reason the two releases — The Center for American Progress’ report and the New York Times’s feature — were ironic in their nearly parallel timing is because they promote competing ideas. One, “Workin’ 9 to 5,” assumes that family life would be enhanced if kids spent more time in school. The other, Lanza’s “Playborhood,” asserts that children were better off several generations ago, when there was less adult supervision, less scheduled activities and more free time.

Both come from a place of problem-solving: one to help families, the other, specifically, to help children, even at the expense of parents’ comfort level and anxiety. And the dilemma is that we can’t have both.

All week, my column prompted conversations with readers and people around town. On some issues, I saw the other side. For instance, more time for art and music would be a bonus to a longer school day. As our society chases better science and math test scores (to beat those countries outperforming us), the arts have taken a hit. But then again, research shows us that true unstructured play (that means no adults involved) is just as beneficial, perhaps even more so, to children’s development.

According to Sergio Pellis, a researcher speaking to NPR in 2014, “The experience of play changes the connections of the neurons at the front end of your brain.”

“It is those changes in the prefrontal cortex during childhood,” Pellis continued, “that help wire up the brain’s executive control center. But to produce this sort of brain development, children need to engage in plenty of so-called free play. No coaches, no umpires, no rule books.”

So a longer school day, even if it’s filled with the arts and recess, is still filled with adults telling kids what to do, how to play, and when and how to settle disagreements. In other words, the helicopter way.

As friends and I had these discussions over and over again, we met an endless loop of pros and cons — for both sides. In the end, however, we always came back to this: If only more people let their kids walk home from school and play outside, parents would be more comfortable (there is safety in numbers, after all) and afterschool care would be less important, especially for the older kids.

But neighborhood streets are empty these days. Cars line up outside schools to pick up kids. And no one is available to play, even if one child is allowed to roam the street and look for friends after school.

We’ve scattered our children to different after-school activities and childcare, and then we’ve turned around to complain about the expense and all the opportunities our children are missing while they are there. Now, some people want public schools — and thereby the taxpayers — to take on responsibilities that used to be the family’s and the neighborhood’s.

So instead of asking how we can fill up two more hours of a school day, maybe instead we should be asking how we can again make our neighborhoods places where children — big groups of them — are safe to roam and play.