[pauleastlund]

This makes intuitive sense to me but doesn't match up with what I've seen anecdotally. I lived in some very wealthy suburbs of NYC, and nearly every family was a two-earner family. My wife and I also homeschool, and have met a bunch of other homeschoolers both in CT and now in CO. By your logic, you'd expect the primary earners in the homeschooling families to earn more than in the average family, but in my experience the reverse is true.

You're right that there's a level of income at which one parent staying home is just not a plausible choice. But it's a lot lower than I'd expected -- I've met some homeschooling families that are doing extremely well by their children at a substantially lower income level than I'd thought feasible. I think the issue here in most cases is less a problem of economics than of cultural values. (Before anyone reads anything pernicious into that, all I mean is that I think American culture overvalues possessions and professional accomplishments and undervalues family in specific and relationships in general.)