Review of The homeschool choice: Parents and the privatization of education

Abstract

K ate Henley Averett’s book, The Homeschool Choice, is well-timed for this moment in the sociology of education, as millions of parents finish a year of makeshift homeschooling due to COVID-19 school closures. Averett collected her data from 2013–2016 (well before we knew a pandemic could bring mass education to its knees) when approximately 1.75 million children— 3.3% of the school-age population—were homeschooled in the United States. Averett surveyed 600 homeschooling parents in Texas, interviewed 46 of them, and took field notes of five homeschooling conferences. The book relies on the qualitative data and features detailed stories of parents’ motivations and experiences homeschooling their children. Although the back cover suggests the book will focus exclusively on sex education, LGBTQ content in schools, and parents’ desire to “empower—or constrain—children’s gender and sexuality,” the actual content of the book is more clearly reflected in its subtitle: “Parents and the Privatization of Education.” This is a book about neoliberal parenting and school choice. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of homeschooling in the United States, focusing mostly on the history, the legal context, particularly in Texas, and the demographics of homeschoolers, including describing the two general arms of the subculture: conservative Christians and liberal “unschoolers.” In Chapter 2, Averett relies on that conservative/liberal dichotomy to discuss “two competing ideologies of childhood” (p. 33): Christians believe children’s developing selves are malleable and prone to influence (thus they reject “overly sexual” schools), whereas liberal parents essentialize their children’s gender and sexual selves, assuming they are fixed and need the right environment to emerge authentically (thus they reject the artificial constraints schools put on these identities). This is the most analytical chapter of the book, and although other scholars have discussed homeschoolers’ dichotomous conceptions of childhood in detail (which Averett does not engage, but should), the genderand sexuality discussion is one I have not seen in the homeschooling literature, which contributes some novel findings to the field.