Homeschooling is a permanently established segment of the American education landscape encompassing nearly 2 million children. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 21 Christian homeschooling fathers in the upper Midwest, this study examines fathers’ perceptions of their place in the homeschooling movement and their rationalizations for homeschooling. The study’s findings suggest that homeschooling fathers have a keen sense of their duty of nurturing the home as a “protective cocoon” where concerted moral cultivation can take place. This forms the basis of a system of “total socialization” aimed at negating the influence of competing socialization agents. But underlying perceptions of the home as a protective cocoon is a legitimation crisis stemming from a loss of faith in American public education and its capacity to act as an agent of moral socialization for today’s youth.
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