I don’t understand why any woman would voluntarily home-school her children. Please don’t say that men home-school their children, too. They don’t.

Why would a mother decide to forgo six or more hours of having her kids out of the house? That still leaves about 18 hours to have them in the house, so it’s not as though they’ll forget what she looks like.

I was watching Love It or List It on HGTV and there was a couple who needed to either enlarge their home or find a new one for them and their seven children, who were home-schooled by the wife. Their seven children. What is wrong with that mother that she doesn’t want them to go away for at least part of the day? I was the eldest of seven children and my mother was happy to see us go to school. She was also mostly happy to see us come home, but I suspect that was because we had left for a worthwhile stretch of time.

Putting aside a mother’s suspicious need to be surrounded by her children at all times, what qualifies any mother to teach seven children all at once? At some point, their lessons are going to be difficult, if not impossible, for her to teach. What then? Does she say, “I never saw the need for geometry, anyway. You only really need to know the basic shapes”?

I’m a smart person, according to all of the Facebook quizzes I’ve taken. Not only can I read a sentence backwards but, according to the quiz I took last night, I have many of the indicators of high intelligence: I’m tall, I’m the eldest child, I’m a night owl, and I enjoy alcohol. But I would never attempt to home-school one child, let alone a passel of them.

I also think kids need to socialize with people their own age so they learn how to interact in society. And, if the older kids don’t get opportunities to make their younger siblings jealous, by doing things the young ones can’t do, then what is the point of being an older kid? And what is the point of being a middle child if you aren’t ignored, or the baby if you aren’t indulged? Instead, they all share the same space, day after day, lumped together as one student entity and treated identically by their no-doubt harried mother/teacher.

Speaking of the mother: How does she work, either in the house or out of the house, if she’s always monitoring her kids’ lessons? She mustn’t get anything else done. And how does she maintain her sanity with everyone around all of the time?

There’s only one answer: These home-schooling mothers are all tall firstborns who stay up all night and drink.