My personal reason for choosing homeschooling for my four children, after discussions with my wife about our childhood educations in two different countries, was to ensure flexibility so that we would never be slowing down our children's education. That has allowed them to learn more at younger ages than is typical in United States schools, even in a good school district like the one we live in. This school year, all three of my children who are still minors are actually enrolled in public school programs (one full-time at the local high school, and the younger two full-time in an online public school). Next year we will try something different again. Flexibility and the opportunity to mix and match learning resources with children's needs is why we homeschool mostly, relying on outside resources as needed.

My badly neglected personal website[1] (I've hardly updated any page on it for YEARS), provides some more details of my thinking about homeschooling, current to a decade ago and perhaps not fully representative of my motivations today.

[1] http://learninfreedom.org/

I can't answer for the OP, but I was homeschooled and I was around a lot of people from other cultures that were also homeschooled.

In the case of the Americans, they were homeschooled primarily because the parents felt they could do a better job than the US school system, and because they wanted to use Christian-friendly learning materials. For social contact and 'real-life' social education, they'd put their children into a variety of (sports) clubs.

In the case of my parents, it was a practical necessity, as we lived in a developing country. The nearest international school was a long drive away, it was expensive, and reintegration into the Dutch school system would have been much more difficult.

Instead, their solution was the get a just-out-of-school teacher to have one or more exciting years volunteering and practicing their craft on me and my siblings, which my parents would augment with personal attention and long-distance help from retired teachers back in Holland. The teacher would use a Dutch 'long-distance learning' approach that was the defacto system for Dutch expats. For high-school material, this meant a book that explained, day by day, what should be read and what exercises should be done.

Now, I personally feel the results were so good, that I would do everything to make it possible to either home-school my children (if I have 'em), or to get them into some alternative school (montessori, etc.). Aside from some difficulties adjusting to Dutch society, my siblings and I did quite well, and I believe on the reasons we are all active learners and autodidacts is a direct result of not having been part of the normal system.

The primary argument I hear against home-schooling when normal schooling is possible is that it hampers a child's social development. I never bought that. Kids get a lot of that from playing out in the street, or being part of clubs. Furthermore, for a significant portion of kids I believe their 'normal' schooling can have a negative social impact, through various degrees of bullying, and the group pressure to believe that learning is stupid. I did not have a clue that voluntary study was stupid and nerdy until I returned to high school at age seventeen...

(of course, I also understand that for many people home-schooling isn't a practical option. I think that's a shame. And I also understand that some parents might not be any good at teaching, and that a mandatory educational system can be a benefit in that case.)

The most common reason around here are parents who don't want their kids religious beliefs distorted by the general public and secular school system. There are religious specific schools but they tend to be expensive and far apart. It is easier to just pull your kids from school and have a parent teach them, supplemented with clubs and special activities.

Another reason is parents might not want their kids to have to cope with the social pressures of the school resulting from both income disparity and bullying.

Some kids just don't do well in large group activities with generic and/or dumbed down lessons. 1:1 teaching and custom tailored educational experiences can really help some kids excel. When the household has enough money and a well enough educated parent, to support a parent staying home doing full time teaching, these kids get educational opportunities they wouldn't get in a large public school system.

Similarly, for whatever reason sometimes the family lives in a school district with either terrible schools or schools with such a cultural mis-match that it doesn't make sense to even bother sending your kids there.

Schools in the US are not all equal. Even a few miles apart, schools can be VERY different. And kids are all different too. We have the opportunity to be flexible about educating our children, which I think works out for the best for the majority of such special cases in the long run.

I have seen home schooled kids who have serious issues with: 1) Deadlines 2) Structured Schedules (like showing up for work on time). 3) Coping with social situations that are outside their comfort zone. 4) Separating from their parents. 5) Recognizing that not everyone learns the same way or at the same speed or is as smart as they are.

Sometimes they end up in trouble and unable to be self-sufficient in our society. Sometimes they find a niche that works for them and are very happy. Sometimes they have none of these issues and you'd never know they were home schooled.