Left to themselves things tend to go from bad to worse. Murphy's First Corollary If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire the next morning you will have a flat tire.
But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.
There is a common theme though in the stories I have told which are usually associations of characters or families that are formed outside of a family circle.