This report doesn’t actually include homeschooling, but given the significantly better family outcomes that accompany Christian Protestant private schooling than either Roman Catholic private schooling or public schooling, it is quite safe to assume that homeschoolers are even more likely to end up in intact families, without experiencing either children out of wedlock or divorce:
Men and women who have been educated in a private school tend to be more likely to be married, less likely to have ever divorced, and less likely to have had a child outside of wedlock. Figure 1 displays the proportion of US adults from each school sector who are in intact marriages, have ever divorced, and have ever had a non-marital birth. All other figures in this report, like Figure 1, do not adjust for background demographic characteristics like race, ethnicity, parental education, age, and gender. Nonetheless, these patterns remain unchanged even when results are adjusted using a regression framework for demographic characteristics. Specifically,
- Adults who attended Protestant schools are more than twice as likely to be in an intact marriage as those who attended public schools. They are also about 50{5274a41d3bd2aa3d5829764fe19e8a7ecbc79c108731aad5f1ff2d292e60e2b4} less likely than public-school attendees to have a child out of wedlock.
- Among those who have ever married, Protestant-school attendees are about 60{5274a41d3bd2aa3d5829764fe19e8a7ecbc79c108731aad5f1ff2d292e60e2b4} less likely than public-school attendees to have ever divorced.
- Compared with public-school attendees, ever-married adults who attended a secular private school are about 60{5274a41d3bd2aa3d5829764fe19e8a7ecbc79c108731aad5f1ff2d292e60e2b4} less likely to have ever divorced.
- Catholic-school attendees are about 30{5274a41d3bd2aa3d5829764fe19e8a7ecbc79c108731aad5f1ff2d292e60e2b4} less likely to have had a child out of wedlock than those who attended public schools.
The results detailed in this report suggest that boys and girls who attend private schools are more likely to avoid a nonmarital birth and to get and stay married. This pattern is especially pronounced among Protestant-school attendees, which suggests that these schools are more likely to foster a kind of “Protestant Family Ethic” among their students. This is an ethic that seems especially conducive to strong and stable families.
Of particular note is the complete failure of “missionary schooling” otherwise known as “sending your kids to public school to be a light unto the benighted godless masses”. That was always a transparently absurd excuse, as children are in the public schools to be indoctrinated, not to indoctrinate. But now there are statistics demonstrating how stupid that feeble rationalization always was.
