Hustle culture, home education, and the money talks we all need

When the answers aren't sexy or easy

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

A few weeks ago I chatted with

Fran Liberatore

on her podcast, A Life Unschooled. We talked about influencers promoting hustle culture in home education circles and touched on financial transparency, the need for reliable childcare, the soaring cost of living and the multi-level marketing feel of a lot of what’s being pushed online, amongst other things. Go listen. It’s a rich one.

I felt so nervous discussing these topics publicly.

It’s not what people want to hear. The social media beast feeds on aspiration. Especially when it comes to talking about money.

We want to believe that we can have it all, which in this case, means making more than most people make in their paid full time jobs while also looking after our kids, which itself is a full time job. 

We’re being told we just have to think creatively enough, think big enough and put in the work. And maybe buy whatever the person saying this is selling.

With my exvangelical hat on, that doesn’t sound far from: believe and you will receive.

I really think it’s coming from a good place with a lot of the people in the home education community who are saying, “You can have it all - let me show you how.” Whatever they’re doing probably really is working for them. At least right now.

But many people have reached out to me since I wrote my post on “homeschool mum hustle culture”, and again since the above podcast episode was released last week, to thank me for talking about this. They have felt like there’s something wrong with them for not being able to earn a big income alongside having their kids at home.

Nothing is wrong with them. They’re not alone. Money can be a fraught conversation among home educating parents. In nuclear families, even when both parents are working, there often isn’t enough money to feel comfortable in an economy that’s calling for two full incomes. 

Personally, I’ve been at various angles with this issue. When our kids were little, we tried to live on just Laurence’s income with anything I brought in being treated as extra. It worked until it didn’t. Things were always really tight. Not enough was being saved for emergencies or the future. I resented relying on him in this way. 

When I began to work more, out of necessity (both financial and my own need to work for self-fulfilment), we tried sharing the parenting/home educating and paid work. Realistically, this ended up producing more stress and maybe as much money but probably less.

To make ends meet (not that we really were!), we soon ended up back in our roles with me as the primary carer, finding that I didn’t have the space to work as much as I wanted or needed to. We were unable to pay for as much childcare as I needed and whatever work I was doing while the kids were with me was splitting my attention in ways that didn’t feel good to me.

I’m not saying that because it doesn’t work for me means it can’t work for others. But I am saying that just because we really want something to work doesn’t mean it will.

You can see why this isn’t a sexy message to put across. Particularly when we’re talking about a majority female space where asking questions can be equated with trying to take other women down. 

For what it’s worth, the same happens in regenerative agriculture where many are sold the dream that they too could turn a small farm into a highly profitable income. Meanwhile the thought leader they’re following is really making the bulk of their own money from selling them books and courses on how to start a small farm. 

It’s also been a vulnerable thing for me to talk about because we’ve recently sent our kids to school so I could earn a full income and try to bring some stability to our family’s finances. 

In fact, when Fran and I chatted on her podcast, the school places were allocated and the uniform bought. It would have been easy for me to disqualify myself from the conversation since I’m no longer home educating. I did suggest she might not want to talk to me and she reminded me that I still have a lot to offer, having home educated for a long time. 

By just moving on, I would be following the pattern so many of us do: dismissing whatever came before what we’re doing right now.

That’s part of a bigger problem of oversimplifying things rather than staying with the complexity of our choices. Something can be complicated and still worth doing. 

For many, home educating and trying to figure out a way to make the figures work is the thing that’s worth doing - especially if their kids have or would struggle with being in school.

For us, sending our children, who are 7, 10 and almost 13 and have always been home educated, is challenging and it’s not an easy choice for us to make. Especially when we’re uncertain about what will now happen with my career. It doesn’t even really feel like a choice when the government-funded option is a take-it-or-leave-it, one-size-fits-all system.

But just as before, I’m doing the next thing that makes sense and relieving myself of the idea that everything needs to be perfectly aligned to be what’s needed for now.

I want to see more conversations about the choices we make that don’t put everything in black and white. Let’s have discussions that don’t short circuit into neatly packaged, universal solutions that may sell well but don’t reflect the messy reality most of us live in.