About a week before Governor Tony Evers shut down Wisconsin, we made our own executive decision: we pulled our kids out of school. At the time, no one had a clue that the entire education system would be closed within a matter of days, much less that it would not reopen for the rest of the year. So we caused quite a stir when we told the principal that our children would be staying home until further notice.

 It was the day after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 had struck our county. My husband Joe and I discussed the risks and implications. We were very concerned about exposing several high-risk family members who live next door on the farm. So, primarily for their sake, we decided to exercise our authority as parents and chose to bring our kids back into the safety of the domestic sphere.

For us, the legally imposed safer-at-home order that soon followed felt a little behind the times. It was only an extension on the public scale of what we had already discerned was right on the private scale. And although I don’t need a gubernatorial declaration to affirm my parental instincts, I didn’t mind the experience. In fact, I think that the family should be the institution leading the way most of the time. The government is here to serve us, not to replace us.

Yet I wonder how often parents recognize their position as a legitimate local authority. We tend to think of our families as being rule-followers instead of rule-makers, at least in the public sphere. Of course, we make rules for our children within our home, but do we fully claim the freedom to exercise our own authority publicly, in contrast to what might be the prevailing ideology or even law of the land?

Just as the federal government must consider the wishes and rights of the states, and the states must consider the wishes and rights of the cities and townships, so too must all of these collective authorities consider the wishes and rights of the basic building block of society: the family. When my brothers and I were in high school, we occasionally heard my parents talking about the remote possibility that we might move to another country. There were (and still are) policies in place in our nation, laws that were (and are) so adverse to the well-being of humanity and our understanding of justice, that my parents contemplated leaving the United States if they were ever forced to support such policies in any direct way whatsoever.

That line was never quite crossed, so we stayed put. But the message was clear: family values come first. The point at which our nation’s laws try to suffocate our morals is the point at which we securely pack up our morals and head out. It is not the point at which we throw our hands in the air and abandon our beliefs to the four winds.

Parents have the privilege and responsibility to form their children’s beliefs according to what they understand to be true. Often, this will resonate with society at large, with laws and educational programs. But sometimes it will not. This does not mean that as a family we must have gotten it wrong. The democratic process cannot legislate what is right and wrong. It merely states what is legal.