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Can intimacy justify home education?

University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, M.S.Merry{at}uva.nl

Charles Howell

Northern Illinois University, USA, chowell{at}niu.edu

Many parents cite intimacy as one of their reasons for deciding to educate at home. It seems intuitively obvious that home education is conducive to intimacy because of the increased time families spend together. Yet what is not clear is whether intimacy can provide justification for one’s decision to home educate. To see whether this is so, we introduce the concept of ‘attentive parenting’, which encompasses a set of family characteristics, and we examine whether and under what conditions attentive parents risk loss of intimacy by sending their children to school; or, alternatively, whether they can avoid this risk by educating children at home. What we will determine is whether families who exhibit the specified characteristics are prima facie justified in educating their children at home under the conditions of interest. We argue that, for attentive parents, home education not only promotes greater intimacy, but also provides insurance against the loss of intimacy that may occur under certain conditions when children attend schools.

Key Words: attentive parenting • home education • intimacy

Theory and Research in Education, Vol. 7, No. 3, 363-381 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1477878509343193


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