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

Acknowledgments

>> ix Acknowledgments When you spend more than ten years on one project, you have a lot of people to thank. The first round of my deepest gratitude goes to the homeschooling mothers who told me their stories. I would never have understood what homeschooling means to them and their families without their willingness to share their experiences with me. I have tried my best to honor the spirit with which they conveyed them. Second, I must thank my academic family, the ethnographers who raised me. Patti and Peter Adler, as matriarch and patriarch, have provided me with incalculable support over the years. Like all good parents, they are always there when I need them, and for that I am eternally grateful. I have also had supportive Adlerian siblings for almost twenty years. Alice Fothergill, Katy Irwin, and Adina Nack provide feedback, probe ideas, and share my passion for sociology. Lori Peek gets a special shout-out for reading the first draft of this book with the dedicated acuity she gives to everything—it has benefited immensely from her feedback. Joanna Gregson read draft two and gets extra thanks for using her keen sociological insight to help me sharpen my ideas and her brilliant red pen to help me de-clunkify. My gratitude for her willingness to serve as the other half of my brain for nineteen years cannot be overstated. I am also grateful to a broader community of scholars who have been generous enough to help this project along: Martha Copp, whose work in ethnography and emotions has paved the way for the rest of us; Michael Flaherty , whose research on temporality provided an analytical epiphany for me and inspired the title of this book’s concluding chapter; Maralee Mayberry, whose work on homeschooling was groundbreaking and who has encouraged this project from the beginning; and Jennifer Reich, whose research on mothering helps me think more deeply about my own. The insightful comments of several anonymous reviewers along the way have also propelled this project immeasurably, as have the tireless efforts of NYU Press editor Ilene Kalish and her assistant, Aiden Amos. The home team at Western Washington University also deserves my gratitude. My colleagues in sociology have given me much-appreciated x << Acknowledgments intellectual support (Mick Cunningham and Laurie Caskey-Schreiber have shown impressive persistence in asking me about this research for more than a decade), and the department has contributed financially to this project. The WWU Office of Research and Sponsored Programs granted me funds for summer research support and interview transcription. Two undergraduate students also helped me locate and interview some of the homeschooling mothers; confidentiality issues prevent me from naming them here, but I greatly appreciate their work! It is impossible to study motherhood for so long without developing a serious respect for the other family roles that make it so rewarding. Jackie and Joe Lois, Mary Lois, Sara and Gary Brown, Lois and Rollie Reinholtz, Rhonda Reinholtz, and Joseph Colletti have all taught me how important supportive, loving parents are. Sophie, Jacob, and Noah have taught me the same thing from the other end. I am exceptionally grateful to Calvin and Marti, always for allowing me to be their mom, but particularly in key moments for humoring my attempts to be a good one. And finally, my undying love and gratitude go to Tim Reinholtz for his stalwart emotional and family support. I am so lucky that one of the ways his generous nature manifests itself is in sharing the domestic load like no other husband I know. ...