Conference Program

The phenomenon of homeschooling raises questions about various aspects of contemporary social life: the meaning of education, the socialisation process, the concept of citizenship, the relationship between the individual and the state, the relationship between the public and private spheres, and the sense of belonging to a broader social system regulated by institutional actors or limited to the family or community (Watson 2018,Restiglian, Busato 2024; Di Motoli 2020, Chinazzi 2020, 2021,2025).

Based on the results of research on the phenomenon of homeschooling conducted in Liguria during the years 2024 and 2025, this paper seeks to examine how the practice of homeschooling may be interpreted as an expression of an intensive and extensive parenting model (Lee, Bristow , Faircloth , Macvarish 2014, Faircloth 2023), centered on the idea of personalized individualism (Lipovetsky, 2013), which can be said to be dominant today, albeit in mostly less radical terms. Adopting a sociological approach, we understand parenting as a field of action that, in a broad sense, intercepts the relationship between the individual and the social context, bringing into play not only subjective representations of the parenting model but also social ones.

Starting from an analysis of the literature on the subject and interviews with homeschooling parents (a part that we are expanding in a second phase of research that has just begun), we intend to bring out and analyse the demands, needs, desires, concerns and expectations that characterise the parental role of families who decide to organize their children's education and socialization independently, foregoing the offer of public or state-approved schools.