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By Suzanne Blake
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A growing number of fathers are ditching gender roles and homeschooling their children post-pandemic, a survey has found.
The number of dads who are responsible for educating their homeschooled kids significantly climbed from 2019 to 2023, the Washington Post survey of more than 1,000 parents of children aged 5 to 20 showed.
While mothers are still the primary homeschool educators, the number of dads who occupy this role jumped from 5 percent to 40 percent in just four years.
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During this time, parents saw a huge shift in work, life and family responsibilities as the pandemic sparked office employees to work from home at unprecedented rates.
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This level of job flexibility could have been responsible for the shift of dads becoming at-home teachers, but previous studies reveal gender and family role dynamics have been changing steadily over time.
Over the past 40 years, men increased the amount of unpaid work they do each week by 5 hours and 35 minutes, according to 'The Time of Our Lives' study by the Resolution Foundation.
Examples of unpaid work included household chores as well as childcare, indicating division of labor may slowly be approaching more equal levels.
The pandemic also might have pushed more parents into homeschooling than in previous years, as a significant number of the Washington Post's surveyed parents indicated their local school's COVID-19 policies were one potential reason they opted to educate their child at home.
While 31 percent said the coronavirus policies at local public schools were too strict, 27 percent said the opposite—that policies were not strict enough when it came to masking or testing requirements.
In New York City, the number of children homeschooled grew by roughly 7,000 or 88 percent since the pandemic hit, according to Chalkbeat, and other cities and states have experienced a similar boost in homeschooling.
Homeschooling as a Trend
Nationally, there are around 3.7 million homeschooled students, according to the National Home Education Research Institute based on data from the 2020-2021 school year.
Historically, parents have chosen homeschooling over local schools for a myriad of reasons.
Often parents feel dissatisfied by the formal education system and want to have a more unique type of learning experience for their children. Other times, concerns over bullying and safety at schools can fuel the desire to homeschool a child in a more protected environment.
Children with special needs or learning disabilities might also prefer a homeschooling environment alongside those with a busy extracurricular schedule that requires more flexibility for their education.
However, no matter the reason, in the majority of cases, mothers have always been the ones homeschooling their children. It's a trend that reflects traditional gender and family roles but is being increasingly challenged as more dads take on work-from-home jobs.
The flexibility of remote work allows both mothers and fathers to spend more time with their children, and in turn, there might be a push for more fathers to take on the homeschooling role.
Men have also been spending more time on housework in recent years, although women still perform the bulk of household chores and childcare.
Research shows men who worked from home increased their time spent on housework as well as time spent with family by more than 5 percent. Male workers who transitioned to working from home also became more family-life-oriented by a rate of 6.1 percent, according to a study from Duke University researchers.
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