Doman’s work exemplified a version of domestic pedagogy that accentuated direct, rather than implicit forms of literacy teaching in the home. Like Bowlby (1951), Doman contributed to a long established trend in neuroscience and human development research of extrapolating findings from studies based on extreme or atypical cases of developmental delay or deprivation to the general population. He argued that if the “abnormal” children he worked with could learn to read, than “normal” children of even younger ages, such as babies and toddlers, could and should learn to read with ease. His views were controversial not because he argued that mothers were their children’s “natural” teachers, but because many scholars believed the teaching methods he advocated were not developmentally appropriate for young children. But like Flesch’s work (1955) (which Doman thought ridiculous), Doman (1964) also explicitly named the stereotypes linking “good mothering” and children’s reading. The popularity of his views, which continue to circulate on Internet chat rooms into the 2000s, may be attributed to his critique of psychology, and the gender biases within education institutions that rendered them suspicious of the contributions the average mother could make to her children’s reading. Doman argued that this “professional paternalism” has

[C]ome close to blunting mothers’ instinctive reactions to their growing children, convincing them that they are being betrayed by their maternal instincts. If this trend continues, we run the serious risk of persuading mothers to view their offspring not as children at all but instead as little bundles of egotistical urges and dark, rather nasty packages of strange and frightening symbolisms that an untrained mother couldn’t possibly understand. Nonsense. In our experience mothers make the very best mothers that there are. (Doman, 1964, p. 96)

Doman articulated children’s reading as a flashpoint for the intersection of social class, mothering practices, and schooling. He reassured mothers that their social class background had nothing to do with their children’s ability to read, but also named “non-readers” as the biggest problem in education, a problem that mothers needed to address:

What a blessing [teaching children to read at home] would be for the privileged mother, for the fortunate child, for the terribly overworked teacher (who could then spend her time transmitting to her pupils the store of knowledge man has accumulated). And what a blessing it would be for the under-financed, underhoused, under-staffed school systems. Look around and see who are the real problems in school. Look at the top ten children in each class and see what common factor is the most prominent in the group. That’s easy — they are the best readers. The non-reading children are the greatest problem in education. (Doman, 1964, p. 107)