The gift of homeschooling: Adult homeschool graduates and their parents conceptualize homeschooling in North Carolina
Abstract
Although still a marginalized practice, homeschooling is on the rise in-ternationally and across socio-economic groups. Moreover, the current Covid-19 pandemic has shifted additional attention to homeschooling.
However, much of the available research is primarily concerned with the current day-to-day practice of homeschooling and little attention is paid to adult homeschool graduates. This ex-ploratory study, based on qualitative interviews with mothers and adult children from 12 families, examines young adults' overall evaluation of their past homeschoo-ling experience and aims to understand how parents and children view the pros and cons of homeschooling in hindsight.
The data analysis revealed that homeschoolers approach education more broadly than focusing strictly on the academic side and it identified the common theme of "gifting," which challenges the prevailing conceptu-alization that homeschooling is a "sacrifice." Respondents viewed their homeschoo-ling experience as a mutually beneficial process of giving and receiving rather than a unidirectional act of "sacrifice."
