It's class snobbery that is the problem, if you think that with their lives planned around the public school they had loved, and with three kids, that it's so darn easy to just suddenly switch to home school. I've been there, juggling a sick husband, a small child and two parents with cancer while in grad school at night and running a business, all at the same time. I ended up massively ill not long after. She has to survive to keep her home and kids going.
It's so easy to sneer at what others "should" do. I refer to that as "shoulding" on people.