All of the homeschooling families I know are sacrificing nice things in order to have one parent stay home. My husband commutes an hour to work so that we can afford to live on one income.
100% Agree. I work full time and homeschool it's a choice we have made and are VERY happy with it, even though it's very hard and most people don't understand our decisions.
I agree with you for the most part. But there are circumstances that that truly make homeschooling inaccessible to some people. I very much respect your choice to homeschool in poverty as a single mom. That is highly respectable. However it sounds like you were just in a season of poverty in your life rather than coming from a long line of a poverty cycle. My husband grew up in situational poverty as well. His parents got divorced and when he was with his mom, they had a very meager lifestyle to get by. However, even though his mom was in situational poverty, she was still highly educated and came from a long line of well educated people who valued education. So she was not stuck in a generational poverty cycle. For people who have been stuck in generational poverty, there is a culture of poverty that is VERY hard to break out of. Families who have very little education (many drop out of school, or are in extremely poor and underfunded school districts that do not perform well) truly do not have the knowledge or ability it takes to effectively homeschool their children. There are exceptions where people break the cycle, but it is not the rule. So in that sense, people who are well educated enough are privileged to homeschool their children. Our family had also made enormous financial sacrifices to homeschool. But my husband is well educated enough to have a job that we can get by on without me working (but with MUCH sacrifice). I also am well educated enough to have the ability to figure out homeschooling. So in that sense, yes, we are privileged to homeschool. But having that privilege doesn't mean that we don't work our butts off to do it well. It is absolutely hard work and all consuming.
Respectfully, I must disagree. For starters you are incorrect in your assumptions about my background. I grew up poor and lived most of my adult life that way. This is the first time I have not lived in poverty and I feel wealthy living paycheck to paycheck. My childhood included abuse, neglect and even homelessness, until my teen years. At which time I still lived below the poverty line. I went to 6 different schools in the 3rd grade alone, not counting how many schools I jumped to throughout my education. All that being said: we cannot control our childhood. It may influence us (I still struggle with issues related to CPTSD), but it only defines us if we allow it to. I’m not suggesting that its easy, but at the end of the day we must choose what we want to make of ourselves. Education is available, we have to choose it. If someone lives below the poverty line education is FREE at all levels. Being educated is not a privilege. It is a choice. Before you assume that I simply married into generational wealth: my husband ALSO grew up in poverty. We live above the poverty line because he chose to serve our country and now as a civilian works his butt off to provide for our family. He doesn’t have a fancy degree or education beyond what the PS provided.
@HomeschoolHappyHour Thank you for your thoughts and I apologize for making assumptions about your background. I am so sorry you have experienced so much trauma. I truly do respect you for breaking the cycle and making a better life for you and your children. You are right that most people ARE capable of breaking the cycle and rising above and COULD do what they need to do to homeschool their children if they want it bad enough. But where I still respectfully disagree is that while people can and do break out of the poverty cycle, it still is a minority of people living in the poverty cycle because so many people in that kind of environment don't even realize that doing so is even something that is possible. Unless someone happens to influence a child or adult from outside of that poverty mentality, they do not even realize what is possible and what they are capable of. There are swaths of kids in inner city schools who are passed from grade to grade when they are not even able to read beyond a very basic level, and they arrive in adulthood having very little education and very few life skills. It's really tragic. So yes, most people may be CAPABLE of homeschooling, but not everyone knows that it's even a possibility. There are some amazing people who are born with a natural inborn drive and resourcefulness and manage to break free and teach themselves the skills they need and do what they need to do to rise above...and it is incredible and inspiring. It sounds like you are perhaps one of those people in fact! But sadly that is just not everyone living in the poverty cycle. There are also people with various disabilities both mental and physical that may be a barrier to homeschooling for them. And there are people who are living in abusive controlling situations where breaking out of that cycle and providing for their kids in that way feels literally dangerous to them. There are many people who manage to escape these situations and make increduble lives for themselves, but not everyone even realizes they can because they are so tightly controlled. Perhaps someone is both fully capable and willing to homeschool their kids, but they are experiencing some kind of unforseen life circumstances outside of their control that are preventing them from doing so. So while I agree that MOST people are capable of making the sacrifices necessary to homeschool if they really want to, there are exceptions. And in that sense, it is a privilege.
@EatPrayCrunch1 thank you for your well thought out response. I’m curious, if you don’t mind sharing, what your experience with poverty is? I don’t know if you realize it, and I’m certain you don’t intend it, but the way you speak of people needing to be pulled out of poverty by someone other than themselves because most don’t even realize their options, is demeaning. Most people are capable of working hard and we live in a world with unprecedented access to knowledge. While I agree that the situations you use as examples are real and make things more difficult for some, privilege is about whether or not something is available to someone, not about how hard it is to access it. We all have challenges, I just don’t think we should wait to be rescued. We can choose to be victims of our circumstances or we can rise above and be survivors. To me, the concept of “privilege” as it is used now, is just another side of the victim mentality coin.
@@HomeschoolHappyHouryes! I was about to make the same argument. I had a crazy childhood of abuse, foster care, changing parents and moving out before graduation. My husband and I both were failed by the system and couldn't read until late in school. We are both only high school graduates, my husband started entry for oil and is working his way up, and we decided to live simply so I can be home with our kids and will eventually homeschool. Times are crazy and their emotional health is invaluable. I don't need a degree to love my kids enough to make that sacrifice.
@@HomeschoolHappyHour I have not personally lived in poverty, but I have several friends and family close to me who have (or are currently). I have also worked in schools, and volunteered at a women's shelter. So I have seen it up close. I truly don't mean to be demeaning, I am just sharing an aspect of poverty culture that people I love an respect have shared. There are countless people you can look up on YT telling this story. That said, people living in poverty are certainly not a monolith. There are all sorts of different reasons people may be living in poverty, with varying levels of knowledge of how to break free from it. I have seen immigrant families living in poverty who work their butts off so their children can live better lives. I have also seen working class people work their butts off to make a better life for their children. However, there are also certain communities living in poverty who have a very different culture and worldview about their poverty. In these communities, there very much is a whole culture of victim mentality. People are told from when they are young that they are victims and do in fact think they need to be rescued. You might be surprised to hear that I actually mostly agree with you about the victim mentality. I think the left and right make a false dichotomy with this issue. Like most things in life, I think both viewpoints have some truth, and both have some flaws. I don't think we should be saying that people are never victims of horrible circumstances, because they are. And we certainly should NOT be blaming victims for something they were born into or had no control over. BUT...I also think it's not healthy to dwell in the victim mentality forever. At some point each person does indeed have a responsibility to take charge of their mental health and get help to heal, and learn how to rise above their trauma. But I disagree that privilege is about whether something is available. Some things are available, but very VERY difficult to access because of all the things I discussed in my first comment. People who have ease of access to something DO have privilege. So in that sense, perhaps we can't say homeschooling overall is a privilege. It's nuanced like everything else. For some it is a privilege because they can access it without too much difficulty (in terms of finances and educational background). For others it is not a privilege because the amount of struggle they have to overcome to access it makes it next to impossible or very very difficult.
Your understanding of privilege is a little off, but I do agree that people like to throw it in the face of homeschoolers without knowing the sacrifices many make to have the lifestyle.
Perhaps my interpretation of the definition of privilege differs from yours? I’m willing to accept that others may see it differently than me. I tend to be literal in my interpretation, so I struggle to see how it’s “off”, but maybe that’s just me.
Find it interesting if the people who say homeschooling is a privilege, are the same people who tote how important it is for kids to attend public school and "socialize". How can something so "bad" be a privilege? You get what Im trying to get across?😅
