SOCIAL ENCOUNTERS OF HOMESCHOOLED CHILDREN: The Role of Family and Parental Characteristics

Record: Oz Guterman and Ari Neuman, “The Role of Family and Parental Characteristics in the Scope of Social Encounters of Children in Homeschooling.” Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26, No. 10 (2017): 2782-2789. [Abstract]

Summary: Neuman is senior lecturer of education at Western Galilee College, in Akko, Israel, and Guterman is senior lecturer in the Department of Human Resources at the same institution. Here the authors calculate the influence of several factors (i.e. parental personality) on the social encounters of homeschooled children.

Previous research has demonstrated considerable differences in homeschool socialization. To broaden the research and locate some contributing factors, Guterman and Neuman distributed questionnaires to 140 Israeli homeschooling parents at one of the weekly homeschool gatherings in the region. To calculate the influence of different variables on the scope of children’s social interactions, the authors engaged in a 5-step statistical analysis, the results of which are discussed below.

1. Step 1: First the authors found that the mother’s level of education and the family’s income did not account for any variance in the scope of the children’s social interactions when viewed independently of other factors.
2. Step 2: Next the authors found that attachment avoidance (a parenting style in which the parent is cold and unattached to their children) accounted for 6% of the variance in the children’s social interactions. In other words, homeschooled children with emotionally-distant parents had, on average, a narrower scope of social interactions.
3. Step 3: Parental extroversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness explained 7% of the variation in the scope of the child’s social encounters. The more extroverted, conscientious, and agreeable that the parents were rated on the questionnaire, the more likely their children were to have a greater number of social encounters.
4. Step 4: As the number of weekly hours devoted to learning increased, the child’s social encounters increased as well. The hours spent learning explained 10% of the variance in the scope of the child’s social encounters.
5. Step 5: Finally, the authors found that three interactions contributed 17% to the explained variance. Put simply, these findings were:
   1. In families with few children, more hours spent learning was associated with a greater number of social encounters. A possible explanation for this interaction is that parents with few children may find it easier or more necessary to plan social encounters for their children.
   2. In families with few children, a higher agreeableness in the parent was also associated with a greater number of social encounters. This finding may be explained through the hypothesis that parent agreeableness only fosters social ties in children when the parent has the appropriate motivation.
   3. Among mothers with a low level of education, there was a significant positive correlation between the mother’s agreeableness and the scope of the child’s social encounters.

Guterman and Neuman conclude the study by offering several limitations. First, they only focused on central personality factors and not on all of the possible complexities. Second, they examined the child’s social relationships without distinguishing between different types of relationships. Finally, the study is also limited by its concentration on Israel. Despite these limitations, it is possible that this study may pave the way for future studies.

Appraisal: While Neuman and Guterman recently released another article that looks at the connection between homeschooler socialization and parental characteristics, the current article offers a more in-depth look at the topic, and it also describes some interesting findings. For example, the parent’s personality had only a small impact on socialization except when combined with other variables such as family size.

One significant weakness of this study is their measurement and definition of the scope of the child’s socialization. While this variable is the crux of the entire study, the authors do not give much detail about how they measured for socialization. Does it depend primarily on the amount of time or people that children encounter, or does it depend on quality? Without a solid definition of socialization, the study’s findings are hard to interpret or apply.

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