She’s not going to be a very good teacher if she doesn’t want to be one.

Homeschooling is one of those things that you should only do if you’re fully committed. If you’re only feeling 50% about doing it, your kids would probably be better off in a public school. You shouldn’t homeschool unless you’re fully committed, because if you’re homeschooling your kids, you are solely responsible for their education. If your kid’s 7th-grade science teacher is mediocre, that’s not ideal, but they will only be getting instruction from her for 45 minutes a day for a year. If you’re schooling your kids from kindergarten through 12th grade and you are phoning it in half the time, that means they’re getting a mediocre education for half of their schooling, and that’s a problem. In public schools, administrative bodies track teachers’ performance to ensure they are performing their jobs well. Some poor teachers slip through the cracks, but that doesn’t mean schools don’t fire teachers for their students’ underperformance. Homeschool moms never receive a performance review, so they must rely on their own judgment to ensure they are doing a good job. Caring about the quality of their children’s education isn’t enough. If a parent’s heart isn’t in homeschooling, they won’t be able to sustain it in the long term, as it is a difficult undertaking.

Sometimes parents want to homeschool, but life circumstances can get in the way of pursuing it. Sometimes, the parent who wants to homeschool their children is the breadwinner and doesn’t have the budget to stay home and teach. At other times, there is family turmoil that homeschooling would only exacerbate. The family in this story falls into both of these situations.