In the post-pandemic world, homeschooling has become more popular each year. In 2019, the number of children who received their education at home was around 2.5 million. In 2024, that number shot up to almost 4 million.
This mom probably fell victim to the homeschooling craze and wished to educate her 6-year-old twins herself. Her husband, however, was against this and enrolled the children in a public school without her knowledge. When she found out and got mad at him, he went online to ask whether what he did was so bad.
Some parents choose to homeschool their kids, and others enroll them in schools
Image credits: mstandret / envato (not the actual photo)
This father went behind his wife's back and enrolled their twins in a public school
Image credits: DC_Studio / envato (not the actual photo)
Most parents homeschool their kids because they want to give them an alternative type of education or worry about the dangers they will be exposed to at school
Image credits: Jena Backus / pexels (not the actual photo)
When it comes to homeschooling, parents choose to do it for different reasons. A 2019 survey asked American parents who homeschool their kids why they do so, and the most popular answer was concern over the child's safety. 80% of parents say they worry their children might get exposed to drugs or experience peer pressure at a formal school.
Others think that schools won't give them the proper academic education. 72.6% of the respondents cited dissatisfaction with the academic instruction at other schools as their reason to homeschool. 54.2% of parents wanted to give their children a non-traditional education, and 58.9% wanted to provide religious instruction.
One of the more popular reasons was also that parents wanted the family to stay together. 74.6% of the parents surveyed said they opted to homeschool their kids because they wanted to put an emphasis on family life together. Other less popular reasons were cited only by less than a quarter of the parents. Those include cases when the child has special needs, physical or mental problems, or has had an illness for a prolonged period of time.
Parents need to weigh the pros and cons of homeschooling before deciding which option is best for their children
Image credits: Andrea Piacquadio / pexels (not the actual photo)
Homeschooling comes with its pros and cons. Perhaps the strongest argument for homeschooling is that children don't have to experience the social anxiety, stress, and bullying that come with attending any school. Research shows that one in five children experience bullying at school, so parents' concerns about that are quite valid.
Another advantage of homeschooling is that teaching your kid at home gives them more personalized attention. Teachers might not always be capable to cater for your child's specific interests and learning style when there are another 20 kids in the classroom.
There's also flexibility. The child doesn't have to be at school at 8 or 9 AM and have a doctor's appointment regardless of school hours. Homeschooling can be an opportunity to spend more time with family as well.
However, that can be a double-edged sword. According to Parents, too much time with your child can cause friction, not to mention that it might be hard to establish a teacher's authority. A solution to that can be homeschooling co-ops for one day per week, where the child can socialize with others outside the family.
Also, while homeschooling can help a child avoid bullying, it also might deprive them of interacting with peers from different walks of life. Doing extracurricular activities such as dance classes or sports teams can also be hard, especially if some don't accept kids who aren't in the school system.
Homeschoolers also might experience judgment from their peers and their parents due to stereotyping. Brian Ray, a homeschooling researcher at the National Home Education Research Institute, told Business Insider that many stereotypes about homeschooled children are no longer true.
"You were either a right-wing, Christian, semi-fundamentalist or a left-wing, move-to-the-country, wear-Birkenstocks-and-raise-goats kind of person," he said. "But now we're thirty-five years after that."
The dad also clarified some things in a later edit and the comments section
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Many commenters sided with the dad; if the mom wants to homeschool the kids, she should prepare a proper curriculum
Yet others said that the real victims here will be the kids and the dad shouldn't have made such a decision without consulting their mother
