A great benefit of homeschooling: having children who become adults

One of the problems in today’s society is so many children who grow old but don’t grow up.  The term “Failure to Launch” has been coined to describe children over twenty who aren’t really yet adults.  They don’t take on adult responsibilities.  They often are still at home with their parents.  Not every person who lives with their parents is in this category, but society has seen a scary trend of more and more children who depend on their parents for support.

One of the driving factors of this trend is children are not embracing and taking on adult responsibilities.  They get married at a much later time in their life, and frequently never marry.  Rather than looking to establish a home and form a family their primary goals are more focused on short term satisfaction from playing video games, traveling or just hanging out with their friends.  They miss out on the joy that comes from marriage and children, and they miss out on the growth. 

Homeschooling provides a setting where parents can encourage and support children to take on more responsibility.  In contrast to the Helicopter parents who push their children through high school and follow their children to college, to make sure Johnny stays focused on school, homeschooling parents normally encourage their children to take ownership of their own education and a young age so by the time their children go off to college the children will welcome the chance to be in charge.

Public schools’ busy schedule with tons of homework push aside any time for gradually learning to run a household or start up a small business.  With homeschooling the parents have greater flexibility to make sure their children are more well-rounded.

It would be interesting to see a study which focused on failure to launch children from the public at large vs. those from homeschooled families.  I expect homeschooled children would have a much higher percentage of those who grew up as their grew old.