I would like to know how expensive such precocity [interest in reading] might be. Is this task an appropriate one for these ages? Is the nervous system mature enough so that this becomes easy and natural? If not what are more appropriate tasks? If Lucy performs such a demanding cognitive task, will she use energy that might be devoted to other areas, such as personality development? Or will certain cognitive processes become fixed as she learns by rote memory? Then, when she enters later stages which demand more and more complex learning formulas, will she be able to apply this fixed formula? Precocity is usually expensive. In Lucy’s case, the only sign that this is anything but good for her is the head of steam she demonstrates to perform and to show it off. This could mean that her main motive is not to satisfy any need to learn but to create a performance for adults around her. She may be trying to fill up a hunger for approval which could be better served in other ways. (Brazelton, 1974, p. 55)

Brazelton hit on the performative aspects of reading that hold explanatory value for analyzing dominant literacy advice discourses. These construct literacy more as a performance of middle-class habitus than as a meaning-making activity. This was discussed in Chapter Five in the context of literacy as a social code and I will return to this idea in Chapter Seven. Ashley’s (1972) predictions for “children’s reading in the 1970s” (Ashley, 1972) suggested that parents’ ideal roles in children’s reading remained focused on the need to supply them with “good” literature. Yet the growing interest in the topic of parental involvement among scholars, documented in Chapter Five, meant that in spite of Brazelton (1974) and Spock’s (1968: 1977) concerns, this role was about to expand. Indeed, while Brazelton expressed concern for the mental health of children whose parents promoted reading, popular magazines such as Parents and Better Family Living (formerly Parents’ Magazine) published articles in 1973 and 1974 on getting a “Happy Head Start in Reading” (Carter, 1973, pp. 48–59) and “What Parents Can Do to Guarantee Every Child’s Right to Read” (Kennedy, 1973, p, 14). For Carter, the “head start” in reading began at age six, at the onset of schooling, and she advised parents to read bedtime stories to their children and make print part of their everyday lives, in much the same vein as Larrick (1958; 1964) recommended. In “What Parents Can Do” Kennedy suggested that parents monitor more closely their children’s learning at school and also promote children’s access to public libraries and home libraries. As in the 1950s, women’s domestic literacy work was also public literacy work. The argument that children had a “right” to learn to read highlighted the growing importance placed on children’s reading abilities, but within a context of society-wide support. The shift from children’s reading as a “right” to a “duty” is documented in Chapter Seven.