Holding Backis a novella written by Frances Prentice, published by the Australian publisher Rhiza Press. It is available on Kindle (how I got it) and also can be purchased in paperback or audiobook form. I discovered it randomly through online browsing, and when I saw it had a homeschooled character, I thought it would be worth considering for the award.
This is a very short and simply written book, but the author still manages to tell a sweet story with actually decent homeschooling representation. It follows fifteen-year-old Nick, who lives on a farm in the outback, and whose main activity in life is campdrafting. As I learned from the book, this is a sport that involves contestants on horseback herding steers through a course. Unlike his sister Kathy, Nick is quiet and awkward. He doesn’t have close friends- until he joins the local swim team. There, he discovers a new passion and forms bonds with his teammates.
While many of the other books this year focus on exceptional circumstances such as boat schooling or agoraphobia, this is realistic fiction about a somewhat more “normal” homeschooler. It is also an uncommon example of a non-American homeschooler, and a teen boy main character. Nick has a list of assignments from his mom that he works through independently. This seems true to how many homeschooled high schoolers are educated, and similar to my own teen years. The story touches upon some struggles with finding friends if you have limited access to and time to talk with kids your age- definitely believable for a homeschooler in a rural area. However, it also shows how friendships are still possible if you are able to be involved in activities. I think that seeing a character overcome challenges as a homeschooler will be more inspirational to real homeschooled kids than the common trope of a completely isolated homeschooler going to school and immediately making best friends.
Socialization is a commonly debated issue related to homeschooling. Do some research on it, and you will find everything from claims that homeschooling produces superior social skills, to warnings about the dangers of isolation. To participate in this debate, you must first understand what socialization actually means, and how it happens. This article series will give a brief overview of socialization. Hopefully it will be helpful whether you are a homeschool alumni evaluating your own socialization, or someone who wants to ensure that a homeschooled child in your life is well-socialized.
Definitions
The word “socialization” has two meanings related to human social development. Merriam-Webster‘s online dictionary defines it as following:
a: the process beginning during childhood by which individuals acquire the values, habits, and attitudes of a society
b: social interaction with others
Socialization is multi-faceted and involves an individual learning the rules of society as a whole, not just that individual’s social interactions with others. What exactly can be meant by “society” though? The relevant Merriam-Webster definition is:
a: an enduring and cooperating social group whose members have developed organized patterns of relationships through interaction with one another
b: a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests
A society is like an ecosystem of humans, where the interactions of different members keep the entire system functioning.
Becoming a Part of Society
A child born anywhere in the world will be born into a society that is defined by their culture and nationality. Just as different species in an ecosystem are dependent upon each other, each individual person relies upon their fellow human beings. That is why it is necessary for a child to be socialized into their own society and learn how to form relationships with the people around them.
The Role of the Family
For most children, their journey into society begins in the home with their own family. Babies are normally held, cared for, and spoken to by caregivers long before they can communicate for themselves. As they grow older, kids can learn about the basic norms of their society from siblings and extended family members. As the textbook Introduction to Sociology available on OpenStax puts it:
They show the child how to use objects (such as clothes, computers, eating utensils, books, bikes); how to relate to others (some as “family,” others as “friends,” still others as “strangers” or “teachers” or “neighbors”); and how the world works (what is “real” and what is “imagined”).
The consequences of not getting this early childhood interaction are devastating. Introduction to Sociology opens its chapter on socialization with an example of a seven-year-old girl who family had severely neglected her.
Without regular interaction—the holding, hugging, talking, the explanations and demonstrations given to most young children—she had not learned to walk or to speak, to eat or to interact, to play or even to understand the world around her. From a sociological point of view, Danielle had not been socialized.
The little girl had been left alone in rooms for most of her life and had never attended school. Without sufficient attention from her family, she was not capable of walking or eating properly let alone communicating with other people. Even basic abilities like these must be learned from others and are not naturally discovered by a child in complete isolation. This tragic case is an extreme example of parental neglect that underscores just how important it is for all children, homeschooled or not, to receive plentiful attention from their family members.
The Role of Peers
The family plays a critical role in how a child learns to interact with the world around them. Homeschooling keeps children at home with their parents and siblings more than they would be otherwise. However, the family alone cannot socialize a child. There are multiple agents of socialization. Members of a society have “organized patterns of relationships” with each other that extend beyond family, and children need to learn how to act in multiple social contexts- including those with peers. Peers offer the chance to form friendships with others of a similar age and developmental stage. This helps children learn “essential social skills such as cooperation, leadership, and conflict resolution“. For adolescents, peer groups are especially important as they “begin to develop an identity separate from their parents and exert independence“. As a young person matures into adulthood, so will their peers, who will become potential coworkers, friends, and romantic partners. They will forever be members of the same generation, connected by shared cultural experiences that began during childhood.
Collective Experiences
Society is defined partly by the fact that its member share “common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests”. Participating in these things gives people common experiences with others in their society beyond their family or even their friend and neighbors. It allows them to “acquire the values, habits, and attitudes of a society”, a core part of being socialized. For children, school is not just a means to the end of learning academic skills it can be considered one of the shared institutions of society. As Introduction to Sociology puts it:
Students are not in school only to study math, reading, science, and other subjects—the manifest function of this system. Schools also serve a latent function in society by socializing children into behaviors like practicing teamwork, following a schedule, and using textbooks. School and classroom rituals, led by teachers serving as role models and leaders, regularly reinforce what society expects from children.
Homeschooled children are separated from the common experience of attending school that most children in developed countries get by default. So, it seems that being homeschooled will cause a child to be participate in society and be socialized differently than most children are. Not necessarily in a worse way, just a different way. They will miss the good of school along with the bad, but instead they will have their own good and bad experiences as a homeschooler. They may have fond memories of co-op friends rather than school friends or going on field trips with their family rather than classmates. Some homeschool alumni may look back with regret over not experiencing a more typical childhood, others with gratitude for their uncommon upbringing, some may have a mixture of feelings. This largely depends on individual circumstances. However, all homeschoolers will have a unique journey into society.
None of this is written as an attack on homeschooling, just an observation about it. Every society is flawed, and homeschooling can be an escape from prejudice and negative peer influence. However, while young people do not need to accept social injustice, they do need to learn to function in society. This is why it is critical for homeschoolers to partake in community outside their home and family, as many already do to some extent. They need frequent, repeated activities that expose them to different parts of society and allow for learning social norms and sharing in common cultural experiences. This includes many types of social interactions and interpersonal relationships. Social interactions with other individuals will be discussed in more detail in the next installment of this article series. Thank you for reading the first one!
Homeschooling is an increasingly popular educational choice. According to the Johns Hopkins School of Education, homeschooling is increasing at an average rate of 5.4% per year in the United States. Parents are turning to homeschooling as an alternative to traditional school, often in hope that it will provide their children with a superior education and social development.
Despite its growing relevancy, studies on homeschool outcomes are few and often flawed. The research that does exist gives a messy, incomplete picture of homeschooling. Without enough research it is difficult to get an accurate picture of what the average homeschooled student is truly like.
The Study
In this article I, the author, will discuss a high-quality study on homeschool outcomes titled “Diverse Outcomes for a Diverse Population“. This 2025 report by Albert Cheng and Angela R. Watson was published by the think tank Cardus. The data was taken from the 2023 Cardus Education Survey, which was given to a representative sample of 2,350 U.S. adults by the polling firm Ipsos Public Affairs. About eight percent (181) of these were homeschoolers. Some major strengths of this study are that it allows homeschoolers to be compared with each other, and with a control group of traditionally schooled adults, and that random sampling reduces the likelihood of the results being biased towards a specific type of homeschooler. The authors also controlled for demographic factors besides school type.
How Long Were Respondents Homeschooled?
The authors divide the respondents into short-term (1-2 years), medium-term (3-7 years), and long-term (8-13 years) homeschoolers. Overall, about 36%, 27%, and 36% of participants fell in each group. The most common number of years spent homeschooled was only 1 year (20% of respondents) with an additional 16% percent of respondents spending only 2 years homeschooled. The next most common time was 13 years (17%), so K-12 homeschoolers were found to be a minority representing less than 1/5 of the total homeschool population. Homeschooling temporarily or making it a long-term commitment both seemed to be a bit more common for students than splitting their education more evenly between homeschooling and traditional schooling.
Is There a Higher Education Gap?
According to this study, there is a gap, with homeschoolers being less likely to pursue higher education.
The 2023 Cardus Education Survey revealed some disparities between different educational groups. Rates of bachelor’s degree attainment were found to be about 46% for non-homeschoolers, 45% for short-term homeschoolers, 27% for medium-term, and 29% for long-term. On the other hand, the rates of having only a high school diploma were 27%, 36%, 47% and 41% respectively. According to the authors’ analysis medium and long-term homeschoolers were less likely to pursue any kind of higher education, and all homeschoolers were more likely to have nothing above a high school diploma than non-homeschoolers.
The study cannot prove that homeschooling causes these outcomes, just that homeschooling for three or more years was correlated with lower pursuit of higher education among those surveyed. Unfortunately, the authors did not discover why the homeschoolers pursued higher education at lower rates.
Do Homeschoolers Earn Less?
According to this study, they do tend to earn less.
52% of non-homeschooled respondents reported a household income above the U.S. median. Only 41% of short-term, 33% of medium-term, and 35% of long-term homeschoolers could say the same. Unemployment was also worse for homeschoolers, especially the medium-term ones who reported an unemployment rate of 33% compared to 19% for non-homeschoolers.
Why does this gap exist? Cheng and Watson speculate that it may be partly due to homeschoolers’ attitudes towards life:
“…long-term homeschoolers may value other things in life more than money, which might partially explain their lower educational attainment and income levels. However, long-term homeschoolers also placed more value on hard work, which might be a partial explanation for why their likelihood of employment was similar to that of more highly educated short-term homeschoolers.”
However, this is just a suggestion, and the authors do not offer an explanation for the source of these differing attitudes.
Are Homeschoolers More Content in Life?
They said yes in this study.
Overall long-term homeschoolers scored the highest on gratitude, positivity, satisfaction with life, and close social relationships, and the lowest on depression and anxiety. Of the three groups of homeschoolers medium-term ones tended to score the lowest on these. The authors do not say whether all of the differences between groups were significant, but the findings suggest that homeschooled respondents at least did not report worse mental health than the others. Homeschoolers were also more likely to have volunteered, and to attend religious services regularly.
When it came to marriage and having children, the largest divides existed within the homeschooling community. Sixty-three percent of long-term homeschoolers were married compared to only 34% of medium-term ones. Long-terms had an average of 1.23 children each while medium-terms had .61. This shows that while some homeschoolers were more likely to have formed a family than non-homeschoolers others were less likely to have done so.
Conclusion
The research by Cheng and Watson truly demonstrates that there are “Diverse Outcomes for A Diverse Population“. Some findings are encouraging, others are worrying. The variations between differently educated adults suggest that traditional schooling, homeschooling, and switching between the two might affect life trajectories. However, Cheng and Watson still warn that their work does not prove homeschooling as the cause of varying outcomes.
” It is important to reiterate that the associations between outcomes and amount of time someone was homeschooled should not be interpreted as causal. The analytic methods used in this report cannot account for every potential factor that leads to the differences observed among homeschoolers. Likewise, the findings in this report cannot speak to why homeschooling for different lengths of time might lead to different outcomes.”
Where will homeschool research go from here? It’s hard to say, but there are many things that could be investigated. I believe that the first step would be to do more surveys like this one to see which outcomes are the most consistently reported. Replication would help researchers to be more confident in their evaluation of the homeschooling community. A good direction for research would be the causes of the apparent lower rate of college attendance among homeschoolers. Is it just a matter of different priorities? Are there barriers in the preparation or application processes? The results of this survey were a bit surprising to me as a homeschool graduate in college. I would also like to see more investigation into the mental health of homeschool graduates. What specific homeschooling experiences are correlated with good mental health? This information homeschoolers should want to know. Hopefully, future generations of homeschoolers will have access to more data than what is available today.
Homeschooled Voices 
