I am not saying that homeschooling in practice is mostly undesirable. Instead, there can be undesirable elements to it. And those undesirable elements are neither common nor easy to spot.

Nor am I saying that it overwhelmingly attracts people with fringe beliefs who aren't going to act in their child's best interest. I certainly think there's an element of truth to it but don't think it's overwhelmingly the case.

My parents did have legitimate reasons to homeschool some of the family. But I think the legitimate issues were leveraged for, indeed, control. Then: I think they bit off more than they could chew (I have a big family); I don't think they realized just how much effort they volunteered of themselves. At the end of a year, they chose to dig their heels in and continue a broken implementation of homeschool and not addressing the problems that came up, instead of risking putting their kids back into school and losing a year or two in grades and having to answer to the State.

> they contribute as much as other taxpayers to the public school system while not getting anything for it.

Yes. Maybe not everywhere but it certainly seemed to be the case when I was in California until moved '03.

To large extend, homeschooling movement was to large extend motivated politically and does attract fringe groups who want to avoid mainstream society. Avoidance of exposure of certain parts of history or sex ed or gender relationships or culture is strong motivation for many of those families.

It did not became popular in conservative christian male is head of household types randomly.