Karther (2002) is interested in the influence of fathers with low level reading skills on their child's life in the
context of building their academic literacy in the Even Start¹⁹ program. The goals of the program are

• to emich vocabulary and foster successful learning for children from birth to the age of seven
  and their parents,
• to offerliteracy services of a reasonable duration to allow for durable change,
• to include parents and the children in activities that encourage the development of life-long
  learning habits, and
• to support the families involved in their education and their quest for economic empowerment.

Karther makes the following recommendations:

• The fathers must participate in academic literacy activities with the children.
• To get fathers interested, practitioners must include activities that correspond to the fathers'
  abilities and books that present traditional masculine roles.
• The programs must consider how fathers can benefit from participating in the program and
  adapt it accordingly.
• Practitioners must be aware that children can act as motivators for their fathers' academic
  literacy learning.
• Fathers who read to their child and who participate in their child's literacy development can
  have a direct, positive impact on this development.

Eifert (2007) reports that the Father Support Program, implemented in Turkey by AÇEV, was designed to
increase the father's awareness of children's development and education, raise their level of knowledge of
child development, help them develop communication skills that will have a beneficial effect on their
child's attitudes, guide them to do literacy activities with their child and spend time with him. The fathers
became less traditional and authoritarian and more permissive in their parental role. In addition,
communication between father and child improved (Kogak,2004).

In Québec, Judith Poirier (2007),who headed the project "Familles et monde de l'ecrit" (family and the
written word) run by the Federation québécoise des organismes communautaires Famille (Quebec
federation of family-oriented community organizations), puts forward guidelines that make it possible to
adapt family literacy programs to the specific needs of men. For example, since it appears that reading and
writing activities in the family are often initiated by women, Poirier suggests activities that are of interest
to fathers at whatever stage of literacy they may be at.

Mothers

Hutchinson (2000) invited women to build their critical literacy by doing their own research on the
socialization process in connection with literacies, and to document the practices around literacy that they
find in their own family. Instead of receiving information that comes from the outside, the women
documented their own behaviour with regard to their own writing and their child's. Hutchinson used the
women's collective knowledge as a basis for a program that aims to inform them on the key principles of
teaching academic literacy, including reading, writing, numeracy and technological literacy. This research
underlines the importance of flexibility with regard to which models to use.

¹⁹ The Even Start family literacy program is based on school-community partnerships that contribute to finding a way out of the vicious circle of poverty and illiteracy by integrating preschool education, adult literacy or basic skills training for adults and education in parenting skills into a unified program of family literacy. Even Start program: http://www.evenstart.org/