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By Movieguide® Staff
Ben and Erin Napier have spent a decade turning Laurel, Mississippi, into an unlikely destination — but these days, how they’re raising daughters Helen, 8, and Mae, 5, draws just as much attention as anything they’ve ever renovated.
“I really don’t want someone else to raise them,” Erin told PEOPLE, cutting straight to the philosophy that drives the HOME TOWN hosts’ entire approach to family life.
That conviction shows up especially when work takes them on the road. When the Napiers film HOME TOWN TAKEOVER on location, they don’t leave Helen and Mae behind. The whole family travels together — nanny and grandmothers in tow — so the girls can experience the work firsthand, trading their Laurel routine for swimming holes and field trips in whatever small town Ben and Erin are renovating.
“The reason we get up and go to work every day, and the reason it matters so much, is that these small towns in America are the flavor of America,” Erin explained to Yahoo Entertainment in March 2025.
Ben put it more plainly: “We don’t fold on our fam.”
Related: 5 Parenting Values Ben and Erin Napier Prioritize Above Everything
Homeschooling is another non-negotiable. The Napiers teach Helen and Mae four days a week, with their production team carving out two or more hours per filming day to make room for school. Ben — a history major and former youth pastor — handles history, Bible and math. Erin takes language arts, poetry, cursive, etiquette, art and science and works with Mae separately on phonics and simple arithmetic.
“Some people think homeschooling is weird. I did too when I was young,” Erin admitted on Instagram earlier this year. “Around the time Helen was born, we met some homeschoolers who were so remarkable, so mature, so communicative, and interested in learning, it made us realize we wanted whatever that was.”
The girls’ off-school days run just as full: French lessons, piano, gymnastics, tennis, ballet, art class and track. They see 12 to 20 friends for about an hour every day. Movieguide® has covered Erin’s gratitude for the arrangement before — she has called it “the best season of our life as a family that I thank God for every night.”
The same instinct behind homeschooling drove Ben and Erin to launch OSPREY, their nonprofit co-founded with friends Catherine and Taylor Sledge. OSPREY — Old School Parents Raising Engaged Youth — aims to help families keep kids off social media all the way through high school graduation. Helen and Mae have never owned a phone, tablet, or device of any kind.
“Research tells us social media is as addictive and destructive for developing brains as any drug,” Erin wrote on Instagram when she first introduced OSPREY. Twenty thousand parents signed up for the newsletter after she teased the concept, proof that plenty of families were hungry for exactly that kind of company.
Underneath all of it is faith — steady, unhurried, and not inclined toward speeches. Ben grew up the son of two Methodist ministers; his parents baptized Helen on Father’s Day, a memory he has talked about with quiet pride. Together, Ben and Erin credit prayer with steering them from small-town woodworkers to national television personalities.
“It took a lot of prayer and a lot of faith to step out and trust that God had a plan for us that we did not write for ourselves,” Ben told Guideposts. That path was never their plan — and from the way the Napiers tell it, that’s exactly what makes it worth following.
Read Next: Ben and Erin Napier Are Officially INN THIS TOGETHER in New Show
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