Would you be kind enough to explain how they did this? Presumably a single mother is going to have to hold a full-time job to support herself and several children, which means she's going to be out of the house at least nine hours out of twenty-four. Then she homeschools the kids for five or six hours (presumably during the daytime when kids are alert). So that's 14 or fifteen hours a day before she even begins on housework, errands, cooking, yardwork, laundry, and any recreation. Sounds like she'd have to work a night shift. So who watches the kids while she's at work, and how does she pay for the daycare or nightcare if she just has a low-income job?
It's not learned helplessness to ask how this is done. I'm scratching my head. Maybe if you had a lot of child support from the ex, or a mother who was willing to keep the kids overnight. Can you offer some clarification?
My comment was not just about homeschooling - perhaps an the earlier post was only speaking only of homeschooling, but I wasn’t intending to do that.
By the way, you are clearly not acquainted with homeschooling. No one who actually homeschools spends five or six hours a day teaching. I never spent more than 20 minutes a day 5-6 days a week teaching our children to read. Once they can read, we just talk about what they have read, which can be done in the car or anywhere else. That is typical of homeschooling. When I do math, I spend five or ten minutes going over the lesson and then maybe 20 minutes correcting and discussing errors.
Most homeschooled children do their school work in 2-3 hours. As I illustrated, homeschooled children get some direction from their parents, but typically do most of their work on their own. A critical part of homeschooling is teaching children to be independent learners.
Now, on to how I have seen single mothers cope:
Some find other mothers similarly situated and help each other by cooping with child care, and then they homeschool in the evenings. Others find jobs where they can take their children with them. Some have small businesses to which they take their children or that they can do from home. Yet others take jobs in Christian schools that allow their children to attend at no or low cost. Some families do coop learning ( I spoke to one black group in which parents, grandparents, and uncles and aunts were pulling all of the family’s children out of the government schools and teaching them cooperatively).
There are many ways of solving problems, but when “free” daycare is seen as normal, most people don’t think very hard about solutions.