Socialization

Do Homeschoolers Lack Social Skills? What Alumni Say

The awkward homeschooler is the oldest stereotype in the book. The research and the alumni on this show both say it is more complicated.

Aug 7, 2026

Do homeschoolers lack social skills? The research says the stereotype does not hold up: reviews of the socialization studies find homeschooled kids scoring at least as well as schooled peers on social measures.^[1] The alumni on this show tell a messier story. Whether a homeschool childhood came with a full social life depended almost entirely on what each family allowed and organized.

Key points

Richard Medlin's 2013 review of the socialization research in the Peabody Journal of Education found homeschooled children's social skills and friendships on par with, and sometimes stronger than, their schooled peers.^[1]
The Cardus Education Survey, which has tracked adults from every school sector since 2011, finds homeschool graduates volunteering and giving at rates comparable to or above public school graduates.^[3]
The research base is thin overall, a limit education researcher Dr. Jonah Stewart discussed on the show.
Guests describe wildly different social childhoods, from packed homeschool-group calendars to years of near isolation, and the deciding factor in most stories is access: co-ops, sports, church, theater, and neighbors.

Where the stereotype comes from

Every homeschool kid has fielded the question: what about socialization? It comes up in nearly every episode of this show, and one guest summed up the feeling in an episode title alone: They Can Smell The Homeschooler On Me. With roughly 3.4 percent of American students now homeschooled, the question follows millions of kids into adulthood.^[6]

What the research actually shows

The most cited academic review is Richard Medlin's 2013 survey of the socialization literature. It found that homeschooling families typically arrange a wide range of social activity, and that homeschooled children report good friendships, strong relationships with adults, and healthy measures of well-being.^[1] The International Center for Home Education Research, an independent group of university scholars, reviewed the same paper and broadly agreed with its conclusions while cautioning that many of the underlying studies rely on small or self-selected samples.^[2]

Adult outcomes point the same direction. The Cardus Education Survey, run on nationally representative samples of adults aged 24 to 39 in 2011, 2014, 2018, and 2023, finds homeschool graduates giving to charity at high rates and logging more volunteer hours than public school graduates.^[3] Even the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, which is openly critical of weak homeschool research, treats Cardus as one of the more rigorous datasets in the field while noting its limits.^[4]

That said, the field is small. Dr. Jonah Stewart, an education researcher who grew up homeschooled across several countries, put it plainly on the show: on many homeschooling questions, researchers do not know as much as they want to (hear that conversation). CRHE keeps a library of the research that does exist.^[5]

What alumni describe on the show

My friend Nick Burgess and I grew up in the same homeschool group, and our childhood was social in ways no school would recognize. A family in our group hosted backyard plays every summer, staged theater-in-the-round on a circular driveway (hear the story). When my parents accepted airsoft as our sport, they funded it and we played constantly (that saga here). Nick's older brother wanted real teams, so his parents let him join the local high school just to play sports (how that worked).

Other guests had the opposite experience. Julius, one of twelve siblings in a pastor-led homeschool family, had a built-in social world at home and a much thinner one outside it, especially through the COVID years (his episode). And in a two-part conversation, my longtime friends Cari, Noah, and Jeneve traced friendships that started in homeschool groups and co-ops through marriages, moves, and changing beliefs (part one is here).

So is the stereotype fair?

Across dozens of guests, the pattern is consistent. Alumni whose families said yes to groups, teams, jobs, and neighbors came out socially fluent. Alumni who spent years isolated carried that into adulthood and had to build the skills late. The stereotype describes the second group and ignores the first, and the research suggests the first group is the larger one.^[1]

Watch the episode: Do Homeschoolers REALLY Lack Social Skills? (EXHS #4)

Sources

Watch the EpisodeDo Homeschoolers REALLY Lack Social Skills? | EXHS #4

Common questions

Are homeschoolers socially awkward?

Not as a group. Reviews of the research find homeschooled children's social skills on par with schooled peers. Individual experiences vary a lot, and alumni who grew up isolated describe building social skills later in life.

How do homeschooled kids make friends?

The alumni on the show mostly made friends through homeschool groups, co-ops, church, sports, theater, and neighborhoods. Families that organized those opportunities produced very social childhoods.

Does research settle the socialization question?

The research base is small but consistent: it finds no general social deficit in homeschooled children. Researchers, including guests on this show, are open about how much is still unstudied.

Do homeschool friendships last into adulthood?

Often, yes. A two-part episode follows three of Jacob's longtime friends through the moves, marriages, and belief changes that tested friendships formed in homeschool groups.