Unschooling academics vs. radical unschooling.
Take unschooling...there are people who "unschool except for math" or who "unschool academics only" (so you trust your child to learn what they need, but dont trust them in any other area of life?)

I really hate this argument. I think it's emotionally manipulative to set up the terms of the argument so that house rules, required chores, behavioral expectations, or any suggestion of a parent-child hierarchy are inherently defined as not trusting your kids. It's the same kind of smug underhanded attack as "it's called unschooling, not unparenting," and yet the same parents who rightfully bristle at the one are likely to come out with the other.

For the record: I have no intention of "radical unschooling" or "whole-life unschooling," and it has nothing to do with having limitless trust in only one area of life. Unschooling academics is trusting that over a period of 18 or 20 years your children will gradually accumulate the knowledge and skills they need to get them where they want to go. It's trusting that there is no particular age at which particular academic milestones must be reached. It's trusting that humans are learning animals, and that learning happens best when it's internally motivated. It's trusting that education is a forgiving and fixable process, with plenty of opportunities for self-correction over the long haul.

And over the long haul, I suppose that I assume that the same is true for moral and social development. I'm pretty sure that it's possible to instill moral principles and social skills by adulthood based only on modeling, conversations, and applications of general philosophy. I don't believe that rules, chores, behavioral expectations, hierarchical family structures, and so forth are necessary to produce a moral adult, much as set lessons aren't necessary in order to produce an educated adult.

But rules, behavioral expectations, and so forth do affect the day-to-day smooth functioning of the family in the present. They speak to the ongoing comfort, health, safety, and equitable workload of family members. As such, they may be valuable in the present even if they are not required to ultimately produce a moral adult.

Academically, I'm really only concerned with the end results. There aren't many academic things for which it would make much difference to me when (or, often, whether) Alex learned them. Behaviorally and morally, I have two concerns: the ultimate end result, and the day-by-day status. I can be confident that unschooling will produce ultimately positive end results in both areas, but still, without contradicting myself, believe that thoughtful and judiciously applied directiveness improves things on the daily level.