The analysis of advice in Chapter Five suggested that reading readiness in the 1930s and 1940s was conceptualized as a set of pre-determined steps toward the achievement of a “mental-age” at which reading instruction could occur. Providing children with the right kinds of books, and ensuring children were not mentally damaged by too much reading, was a theme in that literacy advice. In the 1950s, however, increased concern for emotionally stable children geared literacy advice toward the connections between raising happy children and promoting reading in the home. Raising emotionally stable and happy children and thus contributing to the democratic project of public education was considered an essential pre-requisite for national visions built around democracy, a “reading culture,” and global economic competition. Ideally, women’s domestic literacy work in the home was geared toward the fulfillment of these national visions, and advice became more specifically oriented to promoting reading “readiness” behaviours, as psychologists and educators emphasized the connections between emotional stability, reading, and citizenship.

The present chapter builds on these insights. It considers mothers’ shifting domestic literacy roles, as described in literacy advice, in the context of the important social and economic changes that took place during the 1970s and 1980s. The chapter traces shifts in literacy advice from its target group of academically-oriented parents that generally dissuaded low-income or minority parents from direct involvement in their children’s school literacy, to the more broadly distributed message to all parents that “you hold the key to your child’s success.” Although literacy advice in the early 1970s contributes to the analysis and arguments made in this chapter, it should be noted that there was not as large a volume of advice to draw upon, perhaps an indication that popular culture was preoccupied with other social issues and the “crisis in reading” of the 1950s and the “smart baby” movement in the 1960s had passed. The literacy advice discourse strategies and themes arising from this chapter’s analysis are summarized in Table 5 on the following page.