Furthermore, it's not uncommon for homeschooling groups to arrange to have adult tutors for some subjects, especially in the higher grades.
> I know that by the time our child was in 2nd grade he was already doing most of his lessons without any adult intervention,
You're very fortunate. For my kids that kinda/ sorta true for the high-school one. And from what I've seen, they're not the exception. It even gets worse with teenage children, because they'll challenge your authority - so while they may work on stuff that teachers gave them, they won't easily take suggestions from you (e.g. what to study, for the high-school exams).
You switch to being a single income family.
One parent, most usually the mother, gives up their career progression for the duration of their children's education.
Actual homeschooling isn't that difficult for the simple reason that there is a massive amount of resources available online - from distance learning organisations or individual tutors offering tuition on specific subjects, to distance learning organisations handling the whole curriculum, to mixing and matching DIY learning together with enlisting the help of distance learning organisations for more 'difficult' subjects - think Maths, Chemistry and Physics (the route we took).
It just depends on how deep your pockets are and your level of commitment i.e. if the homeschooling parent is willing to put in the hours to prep ahead of lessons or they'd prefer to leave it all up to a distance learning organisation and they just act as the facilitator.
We're currently putting our two girls through UK GCSEs, it's a mix of my wife teaching them English and a couple of others subjects and me teaching them Computer Studies, and us then also paying for online tuition in Spanish and the services of a local Music teacher.
It's one thing to thoughtfully decide that it is best for your family to outsource education for various reasons. It's quite another to think that it is, by default, impossible to do it yourself.
> It's quite another to think that it is, by default, impossible to do it yourself.
It's not, if they chose the same career path as I did, or my wife did. But I don't see how we could plausibly expose them to different options. Case in point - the older child plans to study architecture; the exam involves quite specialized drawing skills. Both of us would have extremely limited knowledge to guide her.
This is a ridiculous comparison. There are a lot of things I took a class or two in that I am not qualified to teach.
Most people are not qualified to teach most subjects at s high level.
I’m a professor and there are only certain topics that I am an expert in. I could tech myself high school chemistry again, but it’s been a few decades.