By Lyn Loxton, Eltham, Victoria
Published in Otherways magazine, August 2003

On making the decision to home educate their children many women often bring up the question – but what about my life, should I devote the next 10-15 years solely to bringing up my children – what about me…?

As we all know, society today does not appreciate, acknowledge and respect women who are full time mothers – quite the opposite in fact. We are lower even than the un-employed – at least they are seen to be looking for a job!!!!

It is quite natural therefore that questions like these should come up – women who stay at home have to constantly explain the reasoning behind this decision – it is as though we have opted out of humanity. It is bad enough explaining staying at home – by the time you have explained this fact you have totally lost your audience anyway – we never even get to explain the fact that we home educate as well. If by some amazing miracle we do still have people listening to what we are saying their eyes inevitably glaze over when we mention that our children are home all day!

So to devote many years of your life to just raising children must be soul destroying to say the least. We have all heard the dreaded “How do you spend so much time with your children – I would go mad” or “You must have so much patience”. …