fine? really?

I've been meaning to write a post on our Education Plan for Miss Bee (and the other urchins) for a while now, but it is an endeavor. I've blogged a bit about education before - here.
That was last May. Since then, I've had a slew of conversations with people close to us - and strangers - about our decision to homeschool our daughter, for now.

These have been like many conversations about parenting - mostly awesome, on occasion fairly frustrating.

If i tried to outline all of the issues these conversations have covered, I'd be exhausted.

But the main thing I've encountered is the idea of "fine-ness" As in - "oh, she'd be fine if you did x" or "x would be just fine for your children." or "I know it's not idea, but its fine, don't you think?"

And the vast majority of the time, I agree. X, whatever x is, would be fine for my children. They'd be fine.

Fine? Really? Seriously?

Are many of us women - educated, capable women - who could go on and do many 'successful' things - are we really opting out (a term coined by Lisa Belkin a few years ago in this article for the nytimes magazine) - leaving the rat race - choosing to be at home, either part or full time - are we really opting out so that our children can experience what is FINE?

I'm not. If I were doing what is fine for my children, I'd be not at home full time - I promise. I'd be in law school, or finished with law school, or in school to be a counselor, or maybe teaching school, or in a PhD program somewhere. If i wanted what was fine for them, dear heavens, I'd pick something more along the lines of what is exciting for me -

It's not that being at home isn't stimulating. Or fun. Or what I'm convinced that I should be doing right now.

It's that if my standard for my children was 'fine' - then I could be spending some more time outside the home doing what I loved to do before the babies came along.

If all I wanted was "fine" nutrition and "fine" moral development and, of special import to this post, "fine" education, then you'd better believe I'd have more time to read, write, think, make money.

Of course Miss Bee would be fine picking among the many private and public school options in the Jackson Metropolitan Area.

But, if you've not gathered it so far, fine is not the goal at our house. Perhaps it should be (she says in a patronizing, pretending to entertain the other side of the argument for two seconds), but its not. Fine is not the goal. Not the penultimate.

Later today or early tomorrow, we'll have the second installment in an as yet undetermined number of parts series about what we do want for our children. And why that's led us down this crazy path of homeschooling.