Record: Coalition for Responsible Home Education, “A Complex Picture: Results of the 2014 Survey of Adult Alumni of the Modern Christian Homeschool Movement, Installment Nine” Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (15 April 2016). [Available Here]
Summary: This post reviews the ninth 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 ninth installment of HARO’s survey explores the respondents’ reports of child abuse, their feelings about spanking, and their understanding of child protective services.
42% of respondents experienced some form of abuse in the home, and 28% experienced abuse outside of the home. The most commonly reported forms of abuse were emotional abuse, verbal abuse, and religious abuse.
Next the authors compare reports of abuse between respondents who came from homeschool survivor networks (Homeschoolers Anonymous/Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out, Love Joy Feminism, No Longer Quivering, etc.) and other sources. Respondents who came directly from the survivor networks were more likely to report abuse, though the difference was not that large. Even if a respondent did not come directly from a survivor network, there is likely still some self-selection bias. Also, females were more likely than males to report abuse both within and outside of the homeschooling environment. 13% of females and 4% of males reported sexual abuse.
55% of the respondents said they know someone who experienced abuse in a homeschool environment. Only 23% said that they were not abused and that they did not know anyone who had been abused.
The respondents were less enthusiastic about corporal punishment than their parents. While 44% of respondents reported that their parents had “often” or “always” used spanking or corporal punishment to discipline them, only 14% agreed that spanking was “often” or “always” an effective discipline technique. Furthermore, only 9% said that they would “often” or “always” use spanking on their children as a form of punishment. Another 32% said that they would never spank their children since 23% of the respondents consider spanking to be inherently abusive. Among the respondents who were spanked heavily as children, 35% said that spanking was inherently abusive.
41% of the respondents were not taught how to recognize abuse. In fact, 10% of the respondents did not know that child protective services existed. Furthermore, 47% of the respondents were afraid of child services at some point. 38% of all respondents were taught that child services were hostile towards homeschooling families, and 24% of the respondents said that the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) was the source of their fear toward child services. Finally, 24% of all respondents strongly agreed that their childhood fear of child protective services did or would have prevented them from reporting child abuse to the authorities. As might be expected, the respondents’ attitudes towards child protective services are much more positive now than they were during childhood.
Appraisal: By this point, it has been well established in the reviews of the other installments that HARO’s sample is not representative of the homeschooling population as a whole. Its respondents, drawn primarily from homeschooling “survivor networks,” are more likely to have experienced abuse than the average homeschooler. However, the sampling bias actually makes this installment more valuable because it gives quantitative data to support some of the claims made in other articles about abuse and homeschooling like Green (2015). Of particular interest, perhaps, is that 24% of the respondents feared child protective services because of the literature or teachings of the HSLDA. Furthermore, HARO’s data shows that large numbers of homeschoolers are in fact being abused. To illustrate, let us look at the example of physical abuse (punching, beating, kicking, biting, burning, or otherwise harming a child). Given that the sample size of the survey is 3,702, that means that the 16% of the respondents who reported physical abuse is equal to approximately 592 physically abused children. When you add the 27% of respondents who knew at least one homeschooler who was physically abused, the total number of physically abused children as reported by the sample suddenly jumps to a minimum of 1,592 children. Using a similar method, we also come to a minimum of 2,480 children with emotional abuse and a minimum of 1,295 children who were educationally neglected. Therefore, while the sample is biased, it does show that abuse happens in the homeschool community with a prevalence that is more than a mere anomaly. Nevertheless, what the survey cannot answer is whether or not abuse happens at a higher, lower, or similar rate in homeschooling families compared to families who send their children to physical schools.
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