emotionally layered accounts: homeschoolers' justifications for maternal deviance

Abstract

Drawing on six years of field research with homeschooling mothers, I show four ways they were accused of maternal deviance for keeping their children out of conventional schools, and I uncover the four justifications they used in response. On the surface, critics objected to the behavior of homeschooling; however, their specific accusations—and the accounts they engendered—revealed that it was mothers' (alleged) emotions that were at issue. I conclude by discussing how attention to emotions enhances our theoretical understanding of accounts, as well as how these data begin to map out the emotional complexities in the social construction of good mothering.

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2007 annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. I thank Patricia Adler, Peter Adler, Karen Bradley, Editor Forsyth, and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I also thank Amber Darland and Elizabeth LeMay for their help in the data gathering process. Thanks also go to the Bureau of Faculty Research at Western Washington University for providing me with financial support to conduct this research.

Notes

¹I refer here to both the classic theoretical formulations in this genre (e.g., Mills' [1940] “vocabularies of motive,” Sykes and Matza's [1957] “techniques of neutralization,” Scott and Lyman's [1968] “accounts,” and Stokes and Hewitt's [1976] “aligning actions”) as well as recent empirical and theoretical investigations employing the accounting concepts (e.g., Buzzell 2006; deYoung 1989; Kalab 1987; Nichols 1990; Pogrebin et al. 2006; Presser 2004; Scully and Marolla 1984; Shover et al. 2004).

²If I were to rely solely on my interview data to show how mothers accounted for their alleged emotional deviance, I would only be able to make claims about how mothers interpreted outsiders' accusations, not about the empirical content of the accusations. However, the observational data I collected from attending homeschooling functions, talking with outsiders about homeschooling, visiting homeschooling websites, and hearing media stories confirm mothers' perceptions: outsiders questioned their feelings and cast them as emotional deviants. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for helping me clarify this issue.

³According to U.S. Census data, the 600 PATH member-families constituted between 3–4% of the households with children under 18 years old in Springfield County. The U.S. Department of Education (see Lines [1998] and the National Household Education Surveys Program [2003]) has estimated that between 1–2% of school-age children are homeschooled nationally, thus, it appeared that homeschooling in our county was indeed quite prevalent—at least twice the national rate, and probably much higher because most families homeschooled more than one child.

⁴I directed two undergraduate students, who had been homeschooled themselves, in conducting several of these interviews.

⁵I rely most heavily on my interview data because they confirm what I found in my observations and other data sources, yet allow the subjects to speak for themselves.

⁶The source of the criticism did not influence whether mothers accounted (they almost always did), but it did affect them differently. Although strangers were the most likely to express their disapproval—fleetingly in the supermarket check-out line, for example—their criticism was most easily dismissed. Comparatively, homeschoolers' received fewer negative comments from their own parents or siblings, yet these family members expressed their disapproval repeatedly and demanded more explanation, which intensified the charge of maternal deviance and the need for solid accounts. Homeschoolers found friends' disapproval harder to disregard than strangers' but easier to deal with than family members because it was usually not chronic.

⁷In another article (Lois 2006), I show that many mothers openly admitted that they were anxious and unsure about how to teach their children, especially early in their homeschooling careers. As time progressed, they experienced ebbs and flows with what they considered “successful” homeschooling, frequently encountering challenges that made them question their decision. Yet these bouts with uncertainty did not shake the confidence they presented to outsiders who questioned their teaching abilities. In fact, they used their uncertainty to show that they were good mothers because (1) they were highly involved, constantly assessing their children's academic progress, and (2) they cared enough to be worried—their anxiety was evidence that they did not disregard their children's best interests. Thus, they felt confident in their ability to find the best fit for their children and alter their educational plans as needed.

⁸Providing for a child who has special needs—whether advanced or delayed—is not an uncommon reason for homeschooling (see Knowles 1988; Mayberry 1988).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Lois

Jennifer Lois is an Associate Professor of sociology at Western Washington University. Her interest in ethnography led her to a six-year study of a mountain environment, volunteer search and rescue group. Heroic Efforts: The Emotional Culture of Search and Rescue Volunteers (New York University Press, 2003) analyzes the confluence of the self, emotions, and gender in the social construction of heroism. In her current research project with homeschooling mothers, she examines how ideas about the self, emotions, and gender contribute to the social construction of “good” mothering.