Homeschooling mothers: Precarious by choice?

Homeschooling as a choice

Among our respondents, the decision to homeschool was often fuelled by the active involvement of mothers in crafting an educational path for their children. Significantly, mothers were the ones who initiated the decision and influenced the whole family into this choice. Young children tended not to be consulted in the initial decision. In a few narratives, where others played a key, inspirational role (i.e. partner, extended family, church), mothers still spoke about how the practice of homeschooling resonated with their own ideas and values:

My husband initiated it [homeschooling], he was a teacher… I don’t remember exactly. It was an experiment at that time; it was not common. But we talked about it, and I was at home with children until they reached school-age, so I just continued with them at home for education. (November 2016, 2 children)

Mothers we spoke with tended towards a highly-active stance concerning homeschooling anchored in a personal mothering style based on intensive contact with their children; a motivation we explore further in another study (Authors, 2020). The interviews depicted homeschooling as a multilayered expression of agency, which is linked to constructions of the subjective meaning of identity and ‘encompasses the feeling of being in charge in determining who one is, of being responsible for one’s essential self, and of being committed to those choices that reflect one’s “truth”’ (Blasi & Glodis, 1995, p. 145). Illustrating the agentic decision, one respondent talked about her struggles to find a place she would consider appropriate for her son’s education. She was not satisfied with the available options and eventually decided to homeschool. This is how she described the reaction of her partner:

I am lucky in that regard, since he [husband] really supports it. He saw how it was for me when I was working in that [alternative] school, and I talked with him about that openly, so he knew everything. So, then there wasn’t really any room or need to discuss it [the decision to homeschool] later because I said that this was how I wanted to do it, and he was like, ‘Sure.’ (May 2016; 1 child)

In the case above, we followed the story of a woman who was strongly invested in providing the best educational environment for her child and actively sought alternatives to public schools which she perceived as too rigid. After actively engaging with some alternative parent-run schools, she progressed to the decision to homeschool, and her husband adjusted to her approach to the child’s development.

However, the benefits of homeschooling, such as the opportunity to spend more time together and individualise education, were perceived as so meaningful some mothers considered it worth going against the opinion of their partner:

My husband didn’t really trust it, and for us [my son and I], it was really a test every year. Every year he [husband] would say, ‘So, he can continue this year, but next year he will go to school.’ (June 2016; 6 children)

Despite homeschooling parents often experiencing renunciation or suspicion, typically they do manage to find like-minded others to cooperate with, an aspect connected to the possibility of choice, strengthening their control over the child’s development. They refuse to participate in a given institution (like a local school) and its prescribed relations, instead choosing their own partnerships with ties and networks varying from long-term friendships to online acquaintances. The following quote suggests the importance of the homeschooling community:

I think it was like two years before I started [that] I joined the community. Back then it was around the experimental phase, so there was a rather small community of homeschoolers. And they organised a number of activities where those mums met up and shared their experiences, and it was open to those who were just considering the decision. So, they could decide, listen to some advice. And during these meetings, I decided that this was something I wanted even though I cannot remember the initial motive now. (June 2016; 6 children)

The common assumption related to cultural constructions of good mothering included in the concepts of ‘sensitive mothers’ (Walkerdine & Lucey, 1989; Phoenix, Woollett, & Lloyd, 1991; Lois, 2013; Vincent, 2000) or intensive mothering (Hays, 1996), with their focus on maternal care, might not only magnify a mother’s need to take control, it might also implicitly evoke institutional mistrust. Homeschoolers prefer to be involved themselves or substituted by other mothers, indicating that this is a sphere of their influence:

The mums are very active. If someone finds something interesting, like a webpage or exhibit, she’ll share it with others. So that’s really nice. […] as I said, we meet twice a week […] and I am glad that I have control over how I do things. And when the kids are with the other mothers, they both provide them with something different. (June/2016; 3 children)

What follows is a discussion of this theme. In Western society, there is an agreement that at a certain point in a child’s life, it is necessary to introduce children to professionally run institutions such as schools. But, as we see in our data, homeschoolers wish to broaden their scope of influence and prolong the period of family care. More specifically, in the Czech context, a study by Kašparová (2015) reports how one of the homeschoolers in her sample condemns the local practice whereby a mother is expected (and financially supported through social benefits) to provide full-time care until the child is around three years old and then abruptly enrol the child in a kindergarten and start working full-time herself. The respondent’s rejection of this formed the grounds for her decision to homeschool, allowing for a longer period of closer ties with her child. Kašparová (2015) and her respondent evoked broader discussions of the local normative framework, which is criticised from multiple perspectives. While some authors argue for a more liberal policy supporting earlier re-entry into the labour market (Hašková, Křížková, & Dudová, 2015), our focus on homeschooling suggests that current policy simultaneously fails those who wish to provide care for longer than usual and materialise their vision of intensive motherhood.

The decision to homeschool and mothers’ experiences with it contradict the Western patriarchal notion of an autonomous subject defined only as detached and relieved from care (Burkitt, 2015). Homeschooling mothers establish a different subjective position for themselves, one that is strongly embedded in self-governance through the non-normative choice they have made and, simultaneously, in relationships with their offspring. Extrapolating from the data, we would suggest that homeschooling could be understood as a choice which places the autonomy of a mother in a different position: not within independence and the sole realisation of one’s interests, nor exclusively relocated outside the private sphere relieved from the burden of care, as it is usually understood, but within their relationships, taking into account multiple perspectives of others and moving between the private and public spheres.

However, this perspective of empowered homeschooling mothers also needs to be assessed rather critically, for it is a decision made from within gendered structures of society and is not free of the consequences generated by gender and class inequalities in society. With this analysis, we aim to avoid falling into the trap of individualism installed by the promotion of ‘choice feminism’ (Budgeon, 2015). Bobel (2002) looked into how particular motherhood lifestyle choices contain elements of social change while being privileged at the same time. Only some can act upon these choices. The obstacles remain impassable for many who cannot afford, for instance, to buy more expensive organic food or remain without a job for years so they can home-educate their children. Thus, we will further investigate the provided accounts concerning the economic situations of homeschoolers.

The precarity which comes with care

As suggested earlier, homeschooling culture, despite some traditionalist tendencies, also contains elements of counterculture. Challenging particularly some of the trends in Western societies, the provision of long-term care in the family and nurturing bonds between family members is a form of resistance to the commodification of care and neoliberal pressures on marketisation (Hays, 1996; Bobel, 2002; Stephens, 2015). When a person chooses to provide care and, in our particular case, education at home, they become more detached from the labour market. This often results, at least temporarily, in downward economic mobility and a degree of economic precarity. The undervaluation of care in our society is accompanied by limited social security for long-term caregivers and a heavier dependence on breadwinners.

The gendered division of labour re-emerges in the modes of economic participation among homeschooling mothers, who narrate different strategies of economic survival. While some live more affluent and others more modest lives, there is something in common: the precarious status of the mother-educator. Their income comes, at best, from irregular fixed-term jobs sometimes combined with social benefits and, overall, with limited or no entitlements to social protection. We chose to present three excerpts pointing at their diverse economic strategies.

In the first case, the mother uses the current family allowance offered by the state, which allows her to temporarily cover the costs of health insurance as a long-term caregiver of children. She has no particular plan on how to proceed once even this minimal measure is no applicable in her case:

Another thing is the money. I am currently registered as a person caring for two children under the age of 15, which will end next year... And after that, I will have to pay my health insurance myself. I don’t pay pension insurance. That doesn’t make sense to me. (April/2016; 2 children)

In the second case, the mother is using her previous professional success and her savings to compensate for a lost income; to live on one income would be difficult for this family.

So far, it’s ok, but I don’t know how long it will work. We could live on just one income if we had to. But for now, I have savings from before, when I was working, and some money from my parents. So, I use my savings, and we don’t live on just one income. (May/2016; 1 child)

In the third case, we show a strategy focused on earning some money; however, it does not come from a standard contract. Flexibility in earning an income is more important than security in this case.

So, I lost my job shortly before my third maternity leave since the organisation had lost a subsidy. I’ve kept up some work, like counselling and a course for children—just for a few hours a week… I was self-employed. And then a mum, who attended some of my courses, told me she knew about an opening in her school; it was just a few hours a week on a project. (April/ 2016; 3 children)

To add to this, we need to mention that while in many families there were younger children; mothers were officially caring for them and receiving parental benefits. This is, again, a temporary solution. Only with older children, who are increasingly able to study on their own, can mothers start thinking about taking more stable jobs:

My children see me working from time to time; I’m not just a hen taking care of the chickens. It works for us that the kids study a lot on their own… for my son, [the youngest of the three] it is also better now. I think in his fifth grade, he started studying more on his own without pressure. (July 2016; 3 children)

Continuing with a discussion of this theme, the homeschooling decision, from our perspective, is framed within a neoliberal notion of the individual as a productive worker, responsible for herself. The idea of an autonomous working subject also fits within the gender equality framework, especially the body of policies focused on work-life balance and flexible work patterns promoting professional female careers and (a degree of) economic independence. The focus in neoliberal society is on the working person, and care is gradually outsourced (Stephens, 2015), partially to relieve women of their double-shift burden as well. Daly (2011) analysed European welfare state policies which have recently been influenced to a significant degree by a desire to encourage employment among both parents. Increasingly, access to benefits is derived from the individual’s relationship to the labour market, and defamilialisation is promoted and accompanied by provisions of care outside the family (private/public institutions).

In Czechia, specifically, we observe a mix of policies encouraging parents to return to the labour market with more familial provisions (Blum, Formánková & Dobrotić, 2014). For instance, a tax reduction is awarded to a working partner for the partner with no/low income, discouraging female caregivers from seeking work even for few hours per week. On the other hand, parents were recently allowed to collect parental allowance faster (in about a year, with the maximum being four) in order to support earlier labour market re-entry. Overall, family welfare benefits are more significant for parents of small children (up to age 3 or 4), and higher-income families can gain more from the system than low-income families (Kalíšková, 2017). The combination of long parental leave and lack of affordable childcare, especially for children under the age of three, results in a low employment rate among mothers—forty-four per cent of those with children under age six (Kalíšková, 2017; Koncepce, 2016). The lack of flexible part-time jobs offering a steady income often leads women to delay re-entering the labour market, take up a chain of short-term jobs, or engage in limited self-employment (Hašková, Křížková, & Dudová, 2015). The latest statistics confirm a feminisation of poverty trend. Nine out of 10 seniors in poverty are women. Among people who retired in 2014, women had a pension that was seventeen per cent less than that of men (Dudová, 2016; Koncepce, 2016).

We argue these negative trends could be exacerbated in the case of homeschooling mothers. Providing care within the private sphere imposes costs in the form of financial obligations, lost opportunities, and foregone wages (Folbre, 2006). But as Folbre (2006) and the accounts of our respondents suggest, it also generates intrinsic rewards, such as stronger family and social ties and high-quality services for those in need of such care. Homeschooling parents expand this perspective of care to include educating their children. However, rewards such as providing a better education than locally available in public schools are still primarily acknowledged within the family and not by the welfare state.

While homeschooling mothers opt out of whichever support is commonly offered by public institutions (i.e. kindergartens, schools), and, as we stated at the beginning of the study, do so on grounds they consider a responsible and agentic choice necessary to fulfil their ideas of good mothering, they do not openly make any claims on the state to support them in their role. Our research showed that some parents, despite being aware of the economic risks (such as lost income, lost years of practice, etc.), feared that lobbying for financial support for home educators might result in it being banned. Overall, narratives reflecting ideas on parenting, mothering, and how they translate into homeschooling practice were more extensively discussed in the interviews than economic factors and related worries. For some parents, homeschooling was a way to provide children with quality education without paying for expensive private schools. This makes sense in terms of the family budget; however, it does not solve the home educator’s precarious status.

Perhaps, more subtly, we might view this practice of not asking the state for public funding as derived from the neoliberal logic of self-responsibility and the priority of individual choices. Thus, homeschooling mothers, as examples from the interviews suggest, take financial precarity as a logical consequence of their individual choice, for which they feel responsible. Once they forfeit the incentive to be economically active, a trend preferred in current social policies (Daly, 2011), they find themselves trapped in the residual familial policies preserving their precarious status.

Limitations of the study and the implications for further research

In this study, we focus on information gathered via interviews. While all the authors were involved in other data collection activities, they are not directly analysed in the current study. We would argue that ethnographic studies are relevant for getting more in-depth information on the motivations and practices of homeschooling. On the other hand, justification of this practice would also require the use of representative quantitative studies, not only directed towards the educational results but also the psychological impact of intensive mothering. Such a combination of data would expand on our study and present more persuasively the practice of homeschooling and the scope of its impact in the current society.

Explicitly, based on the presented study, we would encourage further exploration of the themes concerning motherhood ideals and the perspective of fatherhood and, more broadly, the perception of gender roles among homeschoolers. Our data indicates that the situation regarding male roles might be more diverse than for women, including traditional breadwinners who are less involved in education, distant and unsupportive fathers, and fathers who are very much involved.