Parents' reasons for operating home schools are complex and embedded in their life histories. Using ethnographic and life history techniques, the author explored connections between parents' early experiences of family, classrooms, and schools and their present circumstances associated with educating their children at home. An overwhelming number of parents in the study had experienced dysfunctional and disrupted family environments along with difficult and trying experiences in schools, which prompted them to compensate on behalf of their children for their own unhappy memories of youth. They particularly wanted to protect their children from the types of experiences they had had in school by creating warm, supportive family learning environments.
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