The author discusses his book "Homeschool: An American History," and offers four primary impetuses for the current status of homeschooling as a political movement. First, he writes, social and political changes of the second half of the twentieth century partnered radical leftists who wanted nothing to do with conventional America and conventional Americans who wanted nothing to do with a country that in their view had sold out to the radical left. Countercultural sensibilities on the political left with those on the political right converged to become the mainstream American sensibility. Second, homeschooling happened because of suburbanization, which feeds the American hunger for privacy, yet serves as a breeding ground for libertarian sentiment and anti-government activism. Third, homeschooling happened because of the cult of the child, rooted in Rousseau and cultivated in the progressive education movement of the early twentieth century, another premise finding common support in both the political left and the political right. The writer completes a full circle by ending primarily where he began, reiterating changes both in public schooling and in families during the second half of the twentieth century. As public schools grew larger, more bureaucratic and impersonal, less responsive to parents and less adaptable to individual or local cultural variations, many families feel increasingly compelled to search for alternative educational options. (Contains 23 endnotes.)