Home Is Where the School Is: The Logic of Homeschooling and the Emotional Labor of Mothering

Notes

>> 195 Notes Notes to Introduction 1. The National Household Education Surveys Program, using small but nationally representative samples, estimates that homeschooling in the United States has increased from 2.2 percent of the school-age population in 2003 to 2.9 percent in 2007. 2. Stevens (2001) reports the rise in homeschooling numbers over recent decades. 3. Gaither (2008) has examined the history of homeschooling in depth. 4. To protect my subjects’ privacy, I use pseudonyms for all names of people, places, and organizations ; in some cases, I have changed identifying characteristics. 5. Typically, the term “homeschooler” can refer to parents who homeschool or children who are homeschooled. For my purposes here, I have tried to reserve the term “homeschooler ” for the parents in homeschooling families (unless otherwise indicated); I try to use the term “homeschooled children” to distinguish my discussion of the children in these families. 6. Since the late 1980s, researchers have examined how homeschooled children compare with their conventionally schooled peers on achievement tests and social skills, as well as how they fare as adults. The little research that exists on these topics shows that homeschooled children compare quite favorably. However, the studies do not rely on representative samples of homeschooled children (and there is no way to obtain such a sample), so the findings tell us nothing conclusive about all, or even most, homeschooled children in how they compare with conventionally schooled children.I take up this issue further in chapter 7, but for now it is safe to say that research shows that most homeschooled children do just fine; whether they would do better in conventional schools is an impossible question to answer. The existing research on homeschooled children’s achievement is limited. Rothermel (2004) provides a summary of the research that has examined homeschooled children’s academic achievement (see also Ray [1988, 2000b]; Wartes [1988]), and Medlin (2000) and Shyers (1992) have both examined homeschooled children’s social skills, albeit with greatly limited samples and procedures. Van Pelt, Allison, and Allison (2009) followed up with some previously homeschooled adults in Canada, fifteen years after they participated in a study as homeschooling children. 7. According to U.S. census data from 2000, 600 families constituted between 3 and 4 percent of the households with children under eighteen in Cedar County. At that time, the U.S. Department of Education estimated that between 1 and 2 percent of school-age children were homeschooled nationally; thus, it appeared that homeschooling in our county in the beginning years of my research was indeed quite prevalent—at least twice the national rate, and probably much higher, since most families (“households”) homeschooled more than one child. For the most credible estimates on the prevalence of homeschooling when I began this research, see Lines (1998) and the National Household Education Surveys Program (2003). 196 > 197 27. For discussion of the ways mothers try to reconcile the competing demands of mothering and womanhood, see Stone’s analysis of mothers who left elite occupations to stay home with their children. She found a “professionalization of domesticity,” in which mothers came to “regard motherhood as a second career, pursuing it with the same intensity and commitment they formerly applied to their professions” (2007:168–69). Similarly, the mothers Webber and Williams (2008b:16) studied considered their part-time work status to be the “best of both worlds” because it allowed them to balance their worker and mother identities. 28. Quoted in Stevens (2001:72). 29. Quoted in Stevens (2001:83). 30. In a small study, Aurini and Davies (2005) discuss homeschooling parents’ identities specifically, concluding that the choice to homeschool stems from the “ideology of intensive parenting.” Parents employ an “expressive logic” to reason that homeschooling is the best way to obtain an individualized educational program for the “precious child.” 31. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) categorizes different states’ homeschooling laws based on their restrictiveness (see http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp). Though this organization purports to work on behalf of all homeschoolers, it is dominated by evangelical Christians with conservative political and social agendas. From their website, under “About HSLDA”: “Home School Legal Defense Association is a nonprofit advocacy organization established to defend and advance the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children and to protect family freedoms. Through annual memberships , HSLDA is tens of thousands of families united in service together, providing a strong voice when and where needed.” Then, under the frequently asked question...