Although reading advice did occasionally appear in these and other parenting magazines, it was usually in the August and September issues when editors were no doubt looking for school-related topics, and then not again for the rest of the year, or even every couple of years. And so in the early and middle 1970s, while the importance of mothers’ role in supporting their school-aged children’s literacy was a part of public discourse, it was not a dominant trend or concern and there was little literacy advice at all for parents of pre-school children. Spock (1977) continued to remind parents of the dangers of encouraging children’s interest in reading before school. While there was “no harm” in “casually answering their questions” (p. 449) about letters and numbers, he warned that:

[T]here is another side to it in many such cases. It often turns out that parents themselves are more ambitious for their children than they perhaps realize, more eager to have them excel…they may be weaned away from the natural occupations of their age and turned into scholars before their time. (Spock, 1977, p. 449)

Giving advice that would be deemed rather heretic in the 2000s when parents are asked to take an active role in children’s homework, Spock advised parents not to get too involved in helping with homework or taking on a tutoring role because “parents often make poor tutors not because they don’t know enough, not because they don’t care enough, but because they care too much, are too upset when their child doesn’t understand” (Spock, 1977, p. 452). This view left open an alternative pathway to reading as a broader literacy practice supported by peers, friends of the family, or tutors.

Larrick’s (1975) third edition of A Parents’ Guide to Children’s Reading offered advice that contrasted with this more easy-going perspective, even as it represented women’s literacy work as “natural.” In her first chapter re-titled, “You Are the Major Influence,” Larrick noted changes in family life that adversely affect children’s chances to become readers. She elaborated, “in a time of greater leisure for adults, parents are spending less and less time in their activities with their children. One study indicates that fathers spend less than half a minute a day interacting with their infants” (p. 4). Yet Larrick did not address the involvement of fathers in their children’s “readiness to read” and given what she knew about fathers’ level of interest in her advice, it can be assumed that the “parents” she was addressing were mothers. Larrick continued to inform parents that the two main ways to cultivate reading were the stimulation of oral language development and ensuring children’s continued pleasure in books. Yet she emphasized in this edition the importance of the home environment for children’s learning. It was the “relaxed atmosphere of the home” that was the natural setting for oral language development and book reading to take place, because “parents can move toward these two goals with greater assurance of success than the nursery school teacher who sees the child for only a few hours a day and must try to meet the needs and interests of fifteen to twenty children at once” (p. 19). In this way, the ideal conditions for children’s learning were linked to the constant care provided by attentive, biological mothers. There were new consequences for children of mothers who did not adhere to this advice, as the responsibity for children’s reading was shifted from school to home: