Anna Gleaton and her husband operate a small farm in 60 acres outside Gainesville, Texas, a rural city south of the state line of Oklahoma. Its farm, which operates on the principles of regenerative agriculture, includes pigs, goats and a dairy cow, which Mrs. Gleaton described as “an adventure.” Another adventure: home education to their nine children, from 2 to 16 years.
Mrs. Gleaton, 36, describes herself as a conservative Christian, and voted for Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. This time, she had not been optimistic that he would focus on issues that most concern him, including earthly earth and river routes. , factory meat and lobbying of agricultural corporations.
But Mrs. Gleaton now receives chicken problems when she looks forward, largely because Trump said she has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Kennedy faces Senate confirmation audiences on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
“It is not very frequent that my world, my kingdom, be conventional,” he said.
Mrs. Gleaton is part of a growing crowd that questions not only educational institutions for what they see as liberal orthodoxy, but also “great AG” and “great pharmacy”, inclinations encoded as progressive not long ago.
In that sense, Mr. Kennedy has been speaking his language for years. He has criticized ultraprocessed foods, warned about the dangers of specific food additives and questioned the safety of fluoride in the water supply.
Mr. Kennedy’s opinions about vaccines have long alarmed public health experts. He has denied that he is against vaccination, designing as a security activist who questions corporate influence on science. But it was a skeptic of COVID-19 vaccines and adopted the discredited theory that vaccines can cause autism. In an appearance in Podcast in 2023, he said that the polyomyelitis vaccine had caused cancers that killed “many, many, many, many more people” than polyomyelitis. In December, he said it was “everything for the polyomyelitis vaccine.”
But among the mothers who educate at home such as Mrs. Gleaton, Mr. Kennedy has been seen for a long time as a real bold and teller, one who understands her skepticism about education and health establishments, including regimes of Traditional vaccines. And its rising profile occurs when this particular constituency is also becoming its own policy and culturally.
“He is saying what parents like me have been thinking for a long time,” said Nicki Truesdell, a five -year -old mother and home education activist in Gainesville. “In the world ‘Crunchy’, he is well known and loved.”
When Melissa Crabtree’s son, who is now 22, was only a few weeks and was breastfed, began to show symptoms that seemed allergic reactions after having consumed corn or dairy. His pediatrician said he could not have food allergy at such an early age, he recalled, and prescribed antibiotics. Months later, after pressing for the tests, his baby was diagnosed with multiple food allergies.
“That was my first lesson as a mother that I need to follow my instinct,” he said. “God gave me a brain and gave me this child to take care.”
For Mrs. Crabtree, who lives in the state of Washington, the home education of her two children was a natural extension of her decision to cook most food from scratch and research connections between the pharmaceutical industry, Medicine schools and health agencies in Washington.
During the coronavirus pandemic, while living in Oklahoma, he also got involved in politics and joined a group of “health rights and parents” who press topics such as vaccine mandates for school -age children.
Mrs. Crabtree has followed Mr. Kennedy for years. She said that many people on her network saw him in the same way they see Mr. Trump: someone whose wealth and influence allow him to tell the truth, regardless of who can offend.
“Finally there is a bull in China’s store,” he said.
Mr. Kennedy was running for president on a platform to “make the United States again healthy”, which was adopted by Mr. Trump when they joined forces in August. The slogan encapsulates a radical but eclectic agenda that aims to raise treatment prevention. Many supporters consider that this is an investment of the approach promoted in recent decades by corporate interests. Online mothers who educate at home and other “crispy mothers” use the hashtag #Maha to share their enthusiasm for the vision of Mr. Kennedy.
Household education expanded drastically during pandemic, since many Americans became skeptical of public health experience. And even when the classrooms returned to normal, the number of home education families has continued to rise. Of the 21 states that have reported data from the 2023-24 school year to the Homes Education Research Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, 19 reported more educated children at home than the previous year.
The motivation of parents to opt for public education varies widely, as well as their religious and political convictions. For many, including conservatives, questioning traditional education often leads to the skepticism of other institutions.
“If you are a countercultural enough to assume the rigors of education at home and to run the risk of social opprobrium to do so, you are likely to be much more willing to be open to other forms of counterculturalism,” Rod Dreher, a conservative writer , he wrote in an email.
Mr. Dreher reported the phenomenon of what he called “crispy conservatives” on a cover story for National Review in the early 2000s, which later became his first book. At that time, I was writing about, and a part of a subculture that even many conservative Christians did not know.
Since then, “Crunchy” has become the main current in conservatism.
Joel Salatin, a self -demonstrated “Farmer of the Libertaria Christian Ecologist Lunatic, has been a crunchy conservative for decades. In books and articles, he evangelized about his life by directing a farm and an education at home to his children.
In the 1990s, he said, the liberals: “Tree Huggers, Earth Muffins, Greenie Weenies,” were mainly those who made pilgrimages to their farm. Now, conservatives are appearing in greater numbers. They want to “unravel,” he said, of the most dominant institutions of society, including public schools, large -scale agriculture and conventional medicine.
“I feel that Cinderella, I have returned to the ashes forever, and suddenly we are asked to dance in the ball,” he said. “This is a cultural change as great as I have seen in my life.”
There were false rumors that Salatin joined the Trump administration. But today, Mr. Kennedy is the flag bearer of conservative crispy. Together with his emphasis on vaccines and food, he is seen as a supporter of mothers.
They often share an appointment by Mr. Kennedy: “The last thing they stop between a child and an industry full of corruption is a mother.”
Hannah Burlaw, 37, schools at home to their two older children of a small town in New Mexico, where the family breeds chickens and ducks. Reading about birth practices and vaccine schedules he began it in what he described as “my trip in the Maha Movement.”
“Many people say: ‘You don’t know what you are talking about, you’re just a mother,'” he said. But Mr. Kennedy has always been “a great defender of listening to mothers.”
A week before Christmas, Mrs. Gleaton met some friends at New Life Bible Church in Gainesville. The Church has become a magnet for home education families in the mostly rural community. Of the more or less 80 children who regularly attend services, many of whom ran around the halls or played on a swing set, women could only think of one that was enrolled in a traditional school.
The lives here are intertwined. Most families have made sacrifices to live with an income. Women exchange fresh eggs for chicken broth, yogurt for sausages and honey for fermented mass bread. Men help each other with household repairs and small construction projects.
They had palpable confidence in what they saw as the future: one with less pesticides and chemicals, without vaccine mandates for their children.
“The parents are waking up,” said Greaton. “Rebel things begin to be normalized.”
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