Record: Coalition for Responsible Home Education, “A Complex Picture: Results of the 2014 Survey of Adult Alumni of the Modern Christian Homeschool Movement, Installment Seven” Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (15 April 2016). [Available Here]
Summary: This post reviews the seventh installment of HARO’s survey of homeschool alumni. For the other installments in the series please click on the following links:
- Installment 1: Background and Summary
- Installment 2: Demographics
- Installment 3: Academics and Non-Academics
- Installment 4: Food and Health
- Installment 5: Religion
- Installment 6: Present and Future
- Installment 7: Sexuality
- Installment 8: Mental Health
- Installment 9: Abuse
The seventh installment of HARO’s survey investigates the respondents’ sexual orientation, gender identity, and attitudes towards sexuality.
83% of the respondents identified as heterosexual. Of those not identifying as heterosexual, about half identified as bisexual and about 1/4 identified as gay/lesbian. Approximately 3% of the respondents did not identify as cisgender.
Sexual orientation correlated very strongly with reports of abuse. In comparison to the 77% of non-straight respondents who reported abuse, only 37% of straight respondents said that they experienced abuse. Furthermore, respondents who were not straight were twice as likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness.
The respondents’ attitudes towards LGBTQ people have developed over time. Most said that their families had negative or very negative opinions of LGBTQ people, but even while being homeschooled, the respondents were slightly more positive towards the LGBTQ community than their parents. Today 75% of the respondents are neutral, positive, or very positive towards LGBTQ people.
87% felt that positivity towards sex should have been communicated during their homeschool education. However, only 37% said that this is what occurred. 50% said that their education did not speak of sex positively and that they wished it had. On the other hand, 49% said that their homeschooling promoted positivity towards their bodies while 46% said that it did not.
55% of the respondents said that they were somehow taught about sexual consent, but only 20% said that the importance of consent was expressly emphasized. 49% were taught directly or indirectly that masturbation was a sin, while 36% were taught nothing about masturbation. A similar breakdown was seen in what the participants were taught about pornography and sexual addictions.
Finally, 9% of homeschoolers who were not abused had engaged in BDSM/kink activities. With respondents who had reported experiences of abuse, this percentage jumps to 21%. Only a very small number of respondents agreed that BDSM is an important part of their identity, though once again, the figure was larger amount respondents who had been abused. The survey asked four other questions about BDSM, but the results all indicate that only a small number of the respondents enjoy and are interested in this activity.
Appraisal: As noted in the review of installment 1, 6,249 people started the survey but failed to finish it. In that review Milton Gaither wondered whether the survey’s intense interest in the sexual practices of the respondents early on in the survey could have contributed to the high drop-out rate. After all, Christian homeschoolers tend to come from conservative backgrounds. After reading this section on sexuality, I have to concur. With not one, not two, but six questions about BDSM, I have to wonder why the survey creators thought they were necessary, especially in such depth and placed near the beginning of the questionnaire. Certainly this article has given us the most in-depth look we’ve ever seen at the BDSM practices of homeschoolers, but these questions likely biased the results of the entire survey towards people who were more comfortable with the subject. As emphasized repeatedly in these reviews, the HARO survey’s methodology of sample acquisition makes its findings ungeneralizable to the broader homeschooling community.
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