Homeschooling and the Social Life of Families and Communities

Abstract

Family social capital and parental involvement in the schooling of their children are considered essential to child flourishing, including educational achievement. Yet parental engagement in family, school, and community life has become more tenuous given social and cultural changes in American society, raising questions about whether and how parental involvement can contribute to thriving children and communities. This paper argues that traditional school-based parent engagement is less likely to generate the kind of family commitments and structures that could strengthen the relation of parental educational engagement and a thriving civic life. The relation of family, schooling, and community in homeschooling orientations and practices offers an alternative pathway to building family and civic life through children’s education—an approach that reduces inequalities related to parental engagement. Using 2019 data from the National Household Education Survey, which provides measures of various home-based educational activities with children as well as educational activities in the local community, the analysis supports claims that homeschooling instills families with purpose and, most importantly, reconstructs the parent role to foster parent–child educational activities that can strengthen children and civic life. It also reveals that educational activities in the home increase homeschoolers’ involvement in educational activities in the community.