Freedom for All: Why Self-Employed Parents Are Choosing Home Education

Over the past decade, we’ve seen a steady rise in people stepping away from the traditional 9-to-5. Self-employment is no longer a fringe choice—it’s a mainstream lifestyle, built around flexibility, autonomy, and a desire for something more aligned with personal values. But for many self-employed parents, there’s a quiet tension that still hums beneath that freedom: school.

It’s a strange irony. You carve out a life where you’re no longer clocking in for someone else. You get to choose your projects, your hours, your holidays. You finally have the freedom you always dreamed of—only to find yourself anchored once again by the school run. The drop-offs. The pick-ups. The parents' evenings, the nativity plays, the assemblies squeezed into weekday mornings. The routine is no longer yours alone. It belongs to the system.

And for a growing number of families, that doesn’t sit quite right anymore.

More and more self-employed parents are turning their gaze toward home education—not because they want to take on more, but because they’re craving alignment. They want the freedom they’ve worked hard to create to extend into every part of their lives, including their children’s days. If work can be flexible, why not education?

Of course, school can provide structure, familiarity, and socialisation. But for some families, it also brings restrictions that feel unnecessary or outdated in a world that’s moving fast in the direction of flexibility. Why should learning be confined to specific buildings, rigid hours, and pre-set timetables? Why can’t children be part of the freedom their parents are living?

That question is beginning to echo louder in self-employed households across the UK. Parents are starting to ask, “What if we could take the children along for the ride?” Not just metaphorically—but literally. On work trips. To coffee shops. To the home office or garden studio. What if our children learned by being near us, watching how we work, seeing what real life looks like on a Tuesday afternoon?

But home education is no small shift. It requires time, presence, and energy—resources that self-employed parents often have in short supply. And so, the friction emerges: how do I support my child’s learning, while still earning a living? Is it possible to do both without compromising either?

This is where things get interesting.

Some families are beginning to quietly explore alternatives. They're adapting their working day around learning rhythms, bringing laptops to forest school, squeezing deep work into the golden hour of quiet, or rotating supervision with other home ed families. They're experimenting, questioning, and—above all—reimagining what a day could look like when you remove the rules that say learning and working must happen in separate, sealed-off spaces.

Is it easy? Not always. But is it possible? That’s the question more and more people are asking. And slowly, new ideas are starting to surface. Whispers of spaces where children can learn and play independently, while parents work nearby. Where quiet focus is modelled, not just expected. Where community, not isolation, supports the juggling act.

We’re not ready to say too much yet. But something is stirring.

If you're a self-employed parent and you've ever found yourself watching the clock to make the school run, or wondered why your day still revolves around someone else’s bell, you’re not alone. The desire to integrate life, work, and learning isn’t selfish—it’s human. It's about connection. Presence. Freedom.

And maybe—just maybe—the future holds more room for all of that.