Beginning at Home: The Challenge of Cristian Parenthood is a classic book from 1955 by Mary Perkins. Beginning at Home: The Challenge of Cristian Parenthood is only 159 pages long and is very readable. Because of the subject matter covered in Beginning at Home: The Challenge of Cristian Parenthood, it should appeal to everyone with school-age children who are considering home schooling them. Though, the book does have a decidedly Catholic bent. That may not be as far-fetched as it sounds, homeschooling is becoming more popular in the United States. Are you considering homeschooling your children, or did you?
Summary of Beginning at Home: The Challenge of Christian Parenthood
This classic book offers practical advice for those parents interested in homeschooling their children. Beginning at Home: The Challenge of Cristian Parenthood does have a Christian bent, but will apply to everyone. There are many homeschooling resources available online to help people, but this book will help as well. Each chapter in Beginning at Home: The Challenge of Cristian Parenthood has helpful discussion questions at the end of it. Speaking of those chapters, they are named these titles.
1. The Christian Pattern
2. Our Neighbors
3. “…You Did It Unto Me”
4. Things
5. Places
6. Work
7. Training for Life’s Work and Play
8. Vocations
9. Redeeming the Time
10. Sex Education
11. Attaining Our Ideals
There is a chapter in Beginning at Home: The Challenge of Cristian Parenthood on vocations. Make no mistake, homeschooling the children is a vocation. Homeschooling is a very difficult thing to do; it is a good thing that there are a lot of resources online, and this wonderful book is complete with discussion questions in each chapter.
Homeschool Statistics
The United States Department of Education, pre-DOGE decimation estimates that 1.5 million K–12 students were homeschooled in the United States in 2007 (with a confidence interval of 1.3 million to 1.7 million), constituting almost 3% of all students. The National Home Education Research Institute estimates this number to be 1.92 million. This was up from 13,000 in 1973, 20,000 in the early 1980s, 93,000 in 1983, 275,000 in 1990, 1 million in 1997, 850,000 in 1999, 1.4 million in 2003, and 1.92 million in 2007. So, homeschooling has become increasingly popular in the United States.
Students were defined as being homeschooled if their parents reported them as being schooled at home instead of at a public or private school for at least part of their education, and if their part-time enrollment in public or private school did not exceed 35 hours a week and students who take classes online who were schooled at home primarily because of an illness were excluded. 80% of five homeschoolers were homeschooled only, while about one out of five homeschoolers was also enrolled in public or private school for 25 hours or less per week. In 2007, 16% of homeschooled students attended a public or private school on a part-time basis.
Parents give many reasons for homeschooling their children. In the 2003 and 2007 NHES, parents were asked whether particular reasons for homeschooling their children applied to them. The three most important reasons selected by parents of more than two-thirds of home-schooled students were concern about the school environment, to provide religious or moral instruction, and dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools.
The other reasons included A dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools, providing a nontraditional approach to education, the child has special needs, the child has a physical or mental health problem, and other reasons. There are multiple motivations for homeschooling children. It is a good thing that there are resources available online for this increasingly popular education method.
Conclusion
Beginning at Home: The Challenge of Cristian Parenthood is a practical book with a Christian bent. This gem for 1955 should appeal to everyone who has school-age children and is considering homeschooling. It is a good thing that there are so many resources available online for practitioners of homeschooling to rely upon.
