The Homeschool Choice. Kate Henley Averett
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over Identity
For some parents, however—particularly the more religious parents—the fear of children being exposed to certain knowledge was also a fear that children would come to adopt, as acceptable, what they saw as “unacceptable” perspectives on sexuality. This was accompanied by a fear that their children would then behave in unacceptable ways. Claudia, whom we met at the beginning of the chapter, explained the dangers of putting children in public school in the following way:
Even if you talk to a child, and prep them, and encourage them, and send them out into a public-school setting, they’re going to make mistakes. They’re going to. I think the pressure is quite a bit, and it’s for such a long period of time. It’s a long period of time to make the right choices, you know, to do things, or to not do things that would be wrong, in your parents’ eyes. And even for adults—you’re in the workplace, you find yourself listening to a joke that you know you shouldn’t listen to, and then, not even calling the person out, “Hey, that’s completely inappropriate.” So it’s not specific to age; it’s just one of those across-the-board type of things that is just a people thing. And it takes practice, to make those right decisions and stand firm in what you believe. That takes practice.
Claudia felt that the temptation to think and behave in ways that are morally wrong was not exclusive to children, but she believed that children have the added disadvantage of not having enough practice in making “right decisions.” Claudia saw homeschooling as a way to prevent her children’s thoughts and behaviors from going in the “wrong,” or morally unacceptable, direction.
For the most part, these parents frame children’s gender and sexuality in terms of behavior, rather than identity. Their goal is not necessarily to shape who their children are, but to shape how they act. They aim to influence their children’s gender and sexual expression by focusing on who they should be—what some referred to as their “character”—which the parents see as being defined primarily by how people behave. They see it as their duty to protect their children from certain influences, and to guide them toward, or lay a strong foundation for, “correct” gendered and sexual expression.
How to lay this foundation for “correct” behavior by guiding children’s character development was the topic of many talks that I attended at the Christian homeschooling conferences. In fact, a frequently repeated message at these conferences was that, while the “school stuff”—like learning to read and write and do math—is important, the most important lessons you teach your children through homeschooling are those focused on their character. A talk that reality-television star Michelle Duggar, perhaps the most famous homeschooling mom in the United States, gave at one of these conferences was centered on character development, which she argued is the most important task in raising children.12 She described how her family has charts of various positive and negative character traits posted around their house, and that her children learn from a very young age to name and define these character traits, as well as to identify their opposite. As part of her talk, she listed what she believes are the top three character traits to develop in children: attentiveness (as opposed to unconcern), obedience (as opposed to willfulness), and self-control (as opposed to self-indulgence). She defined attentiveness as “showing the worth of a person by giving undivided concentration to his words and emotions,” and explained that this trait is especially important for homeschooling children if they are going to learn from their parents at home. She defined obedience as “the freedom to be creative under God-given authority.” She emphasized that obedience from children did not just mean they do as they are told, but that they do so instantly, cheerfully, thoroughly, and unconditionally. Finally, she defined self-control as “instant obedience to the initial prompting of God’s spirit.” To illustrate how her children learn these character traits, Michelle showed a video of Josie—child number 19—reciting the definition of “self-control” over and over again, with great enthusiasm (and more than a little bit of hamming it up for the camera). Michelle explained that Josie was learning self-control as she was being potty trained.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the talk about training children and guiding their character development was gender specific. A few speakers gave two separate talks on the same subject (e.g., etiquette, the most important homeschooling lessons, learning styles) that were separated by gender. Interestingly, these talks often contained very similar content, but they were always framed as being different, based on gender. For example, one of the Texas Homeschool Coalition keynote speakers, Todd Wilson, Christian author and founder of Familyman Ministries, gave one talk called “Raising Dangerous Sons in a Safe and Mediocre World,” followed later that day by a talk called “Ten Things to Teach Your Daughter before She Graduates.” While there were certainly some gender-specific points made in each talk, there was also clear overlap. In fact, the primary message of each of these talks was very similar: that parents must model for their children how to be good husbands/fathers or wives/mothers, and be devoted to God and to their families. Dividing the content into two separate talks, however, had the effect of reinforcing the idea that boys and girls are very different from each other, and that all boys have certain needs, while all girls have other needs.
At the Catholic homeschooling conference I attended, the talk of “virtues”—a concept that seemed to carry the same meaning as “character” did at the fundamentalist Protestant conferences—was also very gendered. The development of virtues was also framed as being of importance primarily so that girls will be able to inhabit the roles of wife and mother, and boys the roles of husband and father, later in life. While the speakers emphasized the importance of virtues for all children, some of the virtues were very gender specific. For example, when speakers described the virtue of modesty, the focus was almost exclusively on the importance of girls being modest in how they dress (one of the speakers, Colleen Hammond, wrote a book on this very subject, titled Dressing with Dignity). Physical endurance was noted to be a virtue that is especially important for boys. Much of the focus on the preteen and teen years had to do with developing virtues that would aid children in maintaining sexual abstinence until marriage. For example, in her talk, Hammond named fortitude as an important virtue to develop for children ages eight to twelve, and suggested developing this trait by keeping meatless Fridays as a family (which, since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, is no longer a mandatory practice for Catholics). Hammond explained the practice by asking how, if parents cannot teach their children to avoid meat on Fridays, parents can expect them to avoid giving in to “the baser feelings” in the coming years, like when they are teenagers and they find themselves alone with someone they really like.
Many of the parents I interviewed echoed the sentiment that parents needed to be able to instill their values around gender and sexuality in their children as a means of guiding their gendered and sexual behaviors. Danielle, a white, high-income, married mother of two, told me that she did not mind teenagers being taught about sexuality in the context of a biology or anatomy class, but, like Sharon, she felt that schools should not promote certain sexual behaviors, including “alternative lifestyles” and “lesbian, gay, and transgender issues,” which she thought were “mom and dad’s arena.” She told me,
I’m not necessarily opposed to him learning about, you know, gay and lesbian issues, or what is a transgender [sic], you know, I mean that’s the world we live in. But that should come from me. And that should be something that I can explain to him, okay, well this is what gay means, this is what lesbian means, this is what rainbow coalition means, this is whatever. And it’s up to me to make sure that he understands that they are still people, and you still treat them with respect, and you don’t hate on them. But what they’re giving them in the schools is that this is normal behavior. That it encompasses all the normal range of human behavior. And you have to accept it, or you’re a bigot. And I don’t agree with that either. That’s something that’s a philosophy, it’s a political-type discussion, that is probably better served in the home, where you’ve got mom and dad that can, you know, guide them.
For Danielle, it was important that she be involved in any conversation her children had about same-sex sexuality, so that she could include her perspective that same-sex behavior is unacceptable, and thus that it is not something that her son should engage in.
In short, these