Happiness was a precondition for children’s ability to read. The ideals to strive for, according to Fenner and Fishburn (1943), were “a home life that is happy, unselfish and democratic, the ability to read and write, study and act and the use of free time for worthy activities and pleasures” (p. 127). Perhaps the most constant thread in reading advice in the 1940s was the concern for what children read. In 1941, a “children’s reading committee” was struck by the Canadian Home and School Federation (CHSF), in part to challenge the spread of violent comic books believed to harm children, and to “turn the attention of parents to the value of good literature and to the need to extend library services for children” (Mansfield, 2000, p. 3). Prominent in parenting magazines were “book list” features that recommended desired reading for boys and girls, and oriented parents toward purchasing books that appealed to children along gender and age differences.¹²

Yet as interconnected as “good reading” and “good mothering” were in this advice, there was also recognition of the uniqueness of each child — many advice articles emphasized that children learned to read at different ages and rates, depending on their “mental ages,” and one pointed out that children who learned to read in Grade Three often get more enjoyment out of reading than those who are hurried to learn in Grade One (Williams, 1939, p. 45). According to this advice, the principle domestic pedagogy task for mothers in the 1940s was to provide a happy home. There were dangers involved in encouraging children to read before they were mentally ready, not the least of which was boredom in school (Rautman, 1945, p. 152) or the experience of failure (Rautman, 1945; Williams, 1939; Wilson and Burke, 1943), from which children needed protection. Indeed, reading to children too much could have the effect of putting them off reading altogether:

Often parents are so anxious for their son or daughter to develop an interest in the printed page that they spend an excessive amount of time reading stories to the youngster. If stories are read to him constantly, he may have his curiosity completely satisfied with the result that he will have no reason to learn to read for himself. (Rautman, 1945, p. 152)

¹² See for example the regular feature by Ruth Wendell Washburn in Parents’ Magazine in the 1940s and on occasion by Elizabeth Chant Robertson and Kate Aitken in the Chatelaine in the 1950s. The role of book lists and recommended reading in constructing gender identities is a theme that touches on the concerns of this thesis, but is also more fully explored in the work of Bronywn Davies. For example, see Davies, B. (1989). Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales. Preschool Children and Gender. Sydney: Allen and Unwin and Davies, B. (1993). Shards of Glass. Children Reading and Writing Beyond Gendered Identities. Sydney: Hampton Press.