In keeping with the methodology described in Chapter Two, the analysis in this chapter includes literacy advice published in commercial parenting magazines, child raising advice manuals, and books on reading to children. Penelope Leach’s (1978) Your Baby and Child, Nancy Larrick’s (1975) A Parents’ Guide to Children’s Reading (1975), and Jim Trelease’s (1982; 1986) Read Aloud Handbook are analysed in particular detail, because not only do these represent significant shifts in literacy advice to mothers, but also they were best sellers at the time in Canada and the United States and produced subsequent editions against which shifts in literacy advice over time could be documented. They are, in a sense, textual barometers reflecting the social malaise that was gathering in the late 1970s surrounding the family, and the place of mothering in particular, as a force in educational reproduction.
In the late 1960s in Canada, the academic expectations of young children were
re-cast in the context of child-centred, experiential learning, and the regulation
of their reading practices eased, as did the ideals embedded in gendered divisions
of labour, at least in intent and terminology. Spock’s 1977 revised edition
is a bow to the women’s movement: “The main reason for this third
revision (5th edition) of Baby and Child Care is to eliminate the sexist biases
of the sort that help to create and perpetuate discrimination against girls
and women”
(Spock, 1977, p. 5). He goes on to state the new assumptions
underpinning his advice:
I always assumed that the parent taking the greater share of the care of young children (and of the home) would be the mother, whether or not she wanted an outside career. Yet it’s this most universal assumption that leads to women feeling a greater compulsion than men to sacrifice a part of their careers in order that the children will be well cared for. Now I recognized that the father’s responsibility is as great as the mothers. (Spock, 1977, p. 5)
Yet, as the literacy advice in that edition, and indeed in subsequent advice manuals suggests, the commitment to inclusiveness in the use of the term “parent,” and the expectation that both fathers and mothers read and carry out literacy advice, belied evidence to the contrary and served to render even more invisible the domestic literacy work of mothers. However, from a policy perspective, the view that families with children thrived in a context of community supports that did not only involve mothering work was also present.