In my opinion, parents teaching their child is better than sending them to a place that tells the kid how to think and learn...of course, it depends on the parent. When it comes to my situation(my local public school, parents ect), it's great! I've been home schooled since kindergarten. For the first five years, my mom taught through Beka books. Then we enrolled in K12, a virtual school, until we graduated from the 8th grade. It's a bit of a long story on how we got from there to here(in college), but all-in-all, it's been very rewarding.
As far as not having a social life or not learning life lessons that being around other kids can teach us, I don't think that's to big of a problem for me...I can't speak for other home schoolers. I meet enough people at our church's youth group(which is open to the public) and I have a couple of good friends. Now when it comes to life lessons...well let's just say I won't leave my stuff out in the open in a crowded and public place anymore.
I mean, it's not like the kids will NEVER learn how to be social. It'll just take a little more time..lighten up! There's more than one way to learn. Take it from someone who has some perspective.*
*(I had to go to public schools to take benchmark test at least once a year. Not to brag or anything, but beacause of me and other home schoolers in the area, our district schools looked good....on paper, that is.
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