[lolinder]

That's a common reason here, too. It's why I was homeschooled—my parents were perfectly content to send us to public school until we moved to another state and had a terrible local school.

OP's perception is because we also have a much larger conservative-Christian cohort than most other developed countries. As the grandparent points out, that leads to a large percentage of homeschoolers doing it for non-academic reasons, which skews stats and public perception.