We all have the choice to keep the laws or not. Most of us are moral people. Most of us obey the laws because we agree that to do otherwise would mean doing wrong by our fellow creatures, or be risky and unwise. We discourage our children from breaking laws for the same reasons that we choose to keep them.

What happens when someone breaks a law? Either nothing because they were not caught, or they get a citation, or get arrested and have a fairly lengthy due process to go through before incarceration or other punishment – that is, assuming conviction.

With the exception of people deliberately engaging in civil disobedience for a cause, one of the things about people who commit crimes is that they usually do not expect to get caught, or they hope to get away with it even if caught. The deterrent effect of punishment is an area of debate in legal, political and religious circles. However, regardless of how many people choose not to commit a crime because they do not wish to risk the consequences, those people who have deliberately broken some law evidently were not deterred at the time.

The final huge difference between the Rule of Law and the adult-imposed rules of a household over a child’s life is one of political process. Adults in a democracy, through the process of voting, petitioning and litigation, have the ability and right – even if not taken up – to challenge, change and influence the laws we agree to follow. It may not be a perfect process, and there are certainly other factors and influences in the political world. But the right and possibilities are still there.

However, the unequal power relationship in a family where the adults have the final say or veto power, and have the power of the law to enforce the rules they choose, whether the kids agree or not, means that the children are disenfranchised as long as they are minors.

Those of us radically unschooling, living a life of principles instead of rules, are adults voluntarily discarding the adversarial power relationship that society would say we are entitled to impose on our children. The results are empowered children today in their real life childhoods, and, as the reported experience of unschooled grown children shows, thoughtful, politically engaged, civil, mannerly, principled adults navigating an adult culture not significantly different from the real world they have always inhabited.

Robyn L. Coburn had to start calling herself an “unschooler”, despite her daughter’s young age, in self-defense against the numerous early academics pushers surrounding her in her neighborhood and local support group. Unschooling with someone as vigorously determined to make her own choices as Jayn has been so much easier than any other “imposed teaching” method could possibly be. In her past life Robyn has been a set, costume and lighting designer in the theater, and a production designer and set decorator in film. She enjoys reading, swimming, sewing, the kind of electronic games that involve puzzles instead of finger drills, classic cinema (i.e. old movies), various crafts, traveling and an intermittently-attended-to nascent interest in screenwriting. Robyn is also co-owner, with another Life Learning contributor, Danielle Conger, of the Always Unschooled discussion group on Yahoo, and a fairly regular poster on several other Internet unschooling lists. She also writes the "Crafting for a Greener World column for Natural Life Magazine. This essay has been included in our book "Life Learning: Lessons from the Educational Frontier.