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Pros and Cons of Homeschooling: A Homeschool Dad’s Perspective

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As a homeschooling mom and blogger, I regularly talk about the pros and cons of homeschooling. I’ve shared why parents love homeschooling and why homeschooled kids love homeschooling, but until I recently read a blog post about the pros and cons of homeschooling that included a dad’s perspective, I had never thought about doing that.

So, of course I had to ask my husband and get his take so I could share it with you. Now, I know there are plenty of homeschool dads out there who are the teaching parent. However, I’m not married to one of them, so this post offers the pros and cons of homeschooling from the perspective of a non-teaching-parent homeschool dad.

Pros and Cons of Homeschooling A Homeschool Dad’s Perspective

I asked my husband what he saw as the pros and cons of homeschooling and this is what he had to say.

Pros of Homeschooling

1. Homeschooling offers more one-on-one time with each kid. He meant that from an educational point of view and said that more one-on-one time means that each child’s area of struggle can be more easily and effectively addressed.

2. Our kids can sleep in if they aren’t early risers. Rather than being a negative (i.e. lazy), my husband has observed that this allows the kids to be more focused and work at the time when they’re most productive, rather than sleepily trying to pay attention and muddle through the early morning hours.

3. We don’t have to get up early to get them off to school. He kind of laughed when he said this, but avoiding the stressful, hectic, predawn rush to get a family of five ready to face the day is an undeniable pro of homeschooling for us.

4. We’re not doing homework for 3-4 hours when they get home from school. This one is from personal experience – and our daughter was only in 1st grade when this was happening. As a matter of fact, this was one of the tipping points for homeschooling for my husband. Initially opposed to the idea, after awhile even he had to admit that if we were spending that much time on school at home, we might as well be homeschooling.

5. We can teach from a biblical point of view. As a Christian homeschooling family, this one is really important to both of us.

6. Peer-pressure is more controlled. He pointed out that our kids still face peer-pressure, but we have more influence when dealing with it.

Pros and Cons of Homeschooling A Homeschool Dad’s Perspective pin

Cons of Homeschooling

7. Homeschooling puts a lot of pressure on the teaching parent. I like that he recognizes that because no matter how much we may all love homeschooling, it does put a lot of pressure on the teaching parent. It can be a stressful thing to take on the responsibility to educate your children at home.

8. The kids might miss out on some of the programs, such as sports. That is true, especially once kids hit the high school years. There are many options for homeschooled kids to participate in sports and in some areas they can participate on the local public high school teams, but it certainly does take more effort to get them involved than it would if they were in school. Of course, Brian followed that comment up with, “Not that our kids care.”

It’s true. They’re not into sports. They’re more into art and music. Brianna did want to play volleyball in high school, and she was able to play on a team for homeschooled kids, so it all worked out.

9. Homeschooling can be financially draining. We have to pay for our own curriculum, but we also still pay taxes for our county’s public schools. Thankfully, there are many options for homeschooling frugally. I do like books. That may be why it seems more financially draining to the guy working to pay for most of it. {ahem}

10. Dealing with the negative attitudes of others. We really haven’t had to deal with anything too horrible, but sometimes we still get the looks and the questions – you know the ones. It doesn’t bother us anymore, but it would be nice to just be able to say, “we homeschool” without mentally bracing for the reaction.

Finally, as kind of a toss-up bonus, he said that we don’t have the routine of regular school hours (and days/months), but he said that was really mostly a positive. His initial thought was that the lack of a more traditional schedule might make working a job with regular hours a bit of a culture shock, but then he noted that our oldest has done fine and that the lack of that traditional schedule offers the kids a lot of freedom to explore their interests, which is definitely a positive.

Have you ever asked your non-teaching-parent spouse what he or she views as the pros and cons of homeschooling? You should try it! It can be very eye-opening.

This post is linked to Top Ten Tuesday and the Hip Homeschool Hop.

images courtesy of depositphotos

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Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.

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7 Comments

  1. My husband loves that he can hang out with the kids whenever he wants to, whether it would be taking them to see WoW, having them help him tune up the car, asking someone to ride along to the store, etc. Since he gets up at 4am, he goes to bed pretty early. If the kids were in school, he really wouldn’t see them very much.

  2. I’d also like to add, from my husband’s point of view (he is a co-teaching parent that used to be the stay-at-home parent in our house when the kids were younger, even though he did work while being home his perspective may be different.
    My husband states a (PRO) is that both of us can be teachers (PRO) We can hire out tutors or teachers to reinforce teaching where we are lacking (PRO) we can travel whenever we want to which expands the adventures we can have with our kids (CON) is that it is a financial burden that makes it difficult for both parents to work outside the home (CON) lack of involvement in High School sports that may lead to scholarship and also keeps kids that love mainstream sports at a disadvantage (CON) The teaching parent who is home, gets little relief from homeschooling and parenting and the child gets little time out (CON) It can put weight on your child when they don’t get enough exercise (CON) State funded career programs like ROTC and TRADE related training offered through local schools aren’t available for homeschoolers

  3. Yes. We actually talked about this, this week. My husband is losing his steam for supporting homeschool as he feels the “kids aren’t learning anything.” He also says that there’s no way to know what the kids are learning without tests. I’m very frustrated and feel drained emotionally as, as the teaching parent, not having support is becoming very hard. We have very different views on this subject. What I’m saying is, my husband is seeing homeschool in general as a con overall.

  4. Another con for me personally is the change in emotion when it comes to our home. Instead of our home being a refuge from the stresses of life, now it represents the biggest one! I’m nagging kids about school not being done, or delivering bad news about a test, or pressing them to discuss their educational path. Sometimes pulling into the driveway just makes my heart sink because I don’t want to be here. I wish it was more of a refreshing feeling to be home!!
    If we ever build a house, I’m also building a little stand alone schoolhouse!! (Vintage, of course!)

  5. I used to think that sports was a con of homeschooling but I don’t think it is much anymore. It may just depend on what sport or what city but in Houston there are a ton of homeschool basketball options for my son. He went to regionals in Dallas last year where there were 200+ homeschool basketball teams competing. Check out https://nchclive.com : )

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