The Homeschool Choice. Kate Henley Averett
reason they chose to homeschool.46 By comparison, in 2007 (the first year the NCES asked parents to choose the most important reason), 36% of parents chose religious instruction—and this was the most common response.47 In both 2012 and 2016, however, the most common response homeschooling parents gave to the question of the single most important reason for homeschooling was “a concern about environment of other schools,” with 25% of parents choosing this response in 2012 and a remarkable 34% doing so in 2016.48
Second, scholars note that the last decade has seen a marked growth in homeschooling by nonwhite families.49 While caution is recommended when using NCES data to estimate homeschooling rates by racial/ethnic group due to the very small sample size of racial-/ethnic-minority homeschoolers, and sometimes-inconsistent reporting of statistically adjusted versus nonadjusted estimates, it is evident that there is a shift. NCES estimates have the percentage of homeschoolers who are white decreasing from 75% in 1999 to 59% in 2016, and the percentage who are Hispanic increasing from 9% in 1999 to 26% in 2016. The percentage of homeschoolers who are from other minority groups has remained relatively more stable, however, with the percentage who are Black at 8–10%, the percentage who are Asian/Pacific Islander at 2–4%, and the percentage of those identified as other at 4–7%.50 However, other scholars argue that there has been an increase in participation in homeschooling by Black families.51
The reason for this growth, particularly in Hispanic homeschoolers, is not clear. The limited research that has been done that focuses on nonwhite homeschoolers has been conducted almost entirely on Black homeschoolers, with almost no research on Hispanic or Asian/Pacific Islander homeschoolers.52 This research has tended to show that some Black homeschoolers choose to homeschool in part as a means of racial protectionism, either to prevent their children from experiencing racism in schools (including racialized discipline, low expectations, and other racial microaggressions from teachers, administrators, and peers) or in response to a specific incident of racism, if their children had already been enrolled in traditional schools.53 Some of these parents are also motivated to homeschool by the ability to include culturally relevant materials in their children’s education (though, researchers point out, some also homeschool for reasons that mirror those of white parents, particularly for those who are fundamentalist Christians).54 Homeschooling researcher Cheryl Fields-Smith argues, on the basis of a review of periodicals, blog posts, and other informal documentation, that there is good reason to believe motivations might be similar for many Hispanic parents as well.55
Conclusion
Taken together, these trends indicate that homeschooling is both increasing in popularity and growing more diverse. What does this mean for how we understand education in the United States today? In the chapters that follow, I take up this question, drawing upon the data I collected to examine the diverse perspectives homeschoolers have on a number of issues, including childhood, education, government, and family, with particular attention to places where homeschoolers’ views tend to converge and diverge.
2
What Is Childhood?
Contrasting Views of Childhood Gender and Sexuality
Claudia and Jamie, two of the parents I interviewed for this project, were both ardent proponents of homeschooling who spoke eloquently, and at length, about why they saw homeschooling as the best educational option for their children. Despite this commonality, however, there was a lot that Claudia and Jamie did not agree on. Among the topics they diverged on were the advantages of homeschooling, particularly when it came to their assessment of issues related to bodily autonomy, gender, and sexuality. Their differing perspectives are representative of two competing understandings of childhood gender and sexuality that I found in my interviews and fieldwork for this project.
I interviewed Claudia, a Black, heterosexual, middle-income, married mother of three children, at a quaint independent coffee shop in her suburban hometown. Claudia, who identified as politically conservative and very religious, told me of how, at a church retreat a number of years prior, she came to be “convicted” that God wanted her to homeschool her children. At some point, our conversation turned to the topic of children and dating. When I asked how she felt about dating, and how she saw romantic relationships happening in the context of homeschooling, Claudia told me,
My experience, with having boyfriends, it just—it never ended well. It was always broken hearts, and lots of tears; it just never ended well. And I don’t think it’s necessary to go through that in order to find someone to eventually marry. [ . . . ] My husband and I agree on that, because he and I started out that way, just friends, and over time it just slowly became more romantic. And once we realized that that’s how we got to this point, it’s like, oh, this is the direction that we should go [with our children]. Just maintaining friendships. And if it naturally goes someplace else, then we’ll let it naturally go there, but we won’t force it. We have run into a little bit of the boyfriend/girlfriend thing [with our oldest son], but we just nipped that in the bud right away, it’s like, nope, we’re not going to do that.
Claudia told me with a sense of shock that she felt as though some of the teenage girls in their homeschooling group were flirting with her son; one girl in particular would frequently hit him in what Claudia interpreted as a flirtatious manner. She explained that, while dating and romantic relationships were far more intense an issue in public schools, homeschoolers are still interested in dating and relationships. But Claudia felt that homeschooling was a better context for children to learn about and understand romantic relationships, for several reasons: first, homeschoolers have a closer relationship with their parents and are more likely to tell them what is going on in their lives; second, the homeschooling families know each other well enough that they can set boundaries and ground rules about dating; and finally, the parents of homeschoolers have greater control in deciding whether, when, and under what circumstances their children are allowed to date.
This last reason was especially important to Claudia. She told me that part of the reason she and her husband were not going to permit their children to date while they are young is that children—even older teens—are just not ready to handle romantic relationships. She explained,
There’s this book that I read a few years ago, I think it’s called What You Should Be to Marry My Daughter. It’s written by a pastor. And at the end of the book, he says, it’s not required that he be complete, now, but just be moving in the direction of all these levels of maturity in all these vast areas. And so I think that that book kind of led me to the fact that you just, when you’re sixteen, seventeen [years old], you’re just not ready. [ . . . ] And he bragged early on, “My daughter has never cried her eyes out about a boy. She has never had to be on some type of suicide watch.” Because he’s a counselor, and he’s had all these people come into his office about all this stuff, and he’s like, “We’ve never done that, because we realize that those types of relationships, they’re just not ready for them.” It’s too much for them to handle; feelings are inevitably going to be hurt. And it’s just too much for them.
Claudia felt that it was extremely important that she protect her sons and daughter from romantic relationships during their preteen and teenage years, for two reasons: first, because such relationships bring about stress and heartbreak that children are not able to handle; and second, because the end goal of relationships was heterosexual marriage, and she did not see dating as an ideal way to find a spouse. Homeschooling allowed Claudia to have—or at least, to feel that she had—a greater level of control over her children’s experience of love, romance, and sexuality.
Claudia’s feelings about the importance of maintaining control over her children’s experiences stood in stark contrast to those of Jamie, whom I interviewed several weeks later at a picnic table outside of her suburban YMCA. A white, bisexual, middle-income, married mother of one daughter, Jamie identified as politically very liberal and not at all religious. She explained that one of the major reasons why she and her husband decided to homeschool—or more specifically, unschool—their daughter, Emery, who had just turned seven, was to help her develop a sense of personal autonomy. Jamie explained how it was very important that they consciously cede control, and let Emery