Many children are already on the road to reading failure when they enter first grade. No matter what the teacher does, no matter which teaching method is used, it will be impossible for some children to catch up. They may remain reading cripples all through school because of what they did not get before they came to school. (Larrick, 1975, p. 3)
A classic example of this conflation between “natural” pedagogic
work and sensitive mothering is articulated by Penelope Leach whose first best
seller, Your Baby and Child from Birth to Age Six, appeared in 1978. Her advice
marked a shift toward more intensive mothering in child-raising advice discourses,
perhaps as a reflection of the growing unease many experts expressed over the
future of the nuclear family (Hulbert, 2003). According to Leach (1978), however,
her advice was not susceptible to shifts in child-raising trends, because Your
Baby and Child was written from “your baby or child’s point of view…however
fashion in child-rearing may shift and alter, that viewpoint is both the most
important and the most neglected”
(Leach, 1978, p. 20).
In Your Baby and Child, mothers were represented as avid baby-watchers, anticipating
their children’s emotional and cognitive needs, and finding great fulfillment
in this: “The more you can understand him and recognize his present position
on the developmental map that directs him toward being a person, the more interesting
you will find him”
(p. 20). This intensive role of constantly watching
and monitoring babies’ needs and predicting and supporting their developmental
stages was not real work, since “taking the baby’s point of view
does not mean neglecting yours, the parents’ viewpoint. Your interests
and his are identical”
(p. 20). Moreover, “this kind of sensitively
concentrated attention to our own real-life child who is a person-in-the-making,
is the essence of love”
(p. 21).
Leach (1978) was one of the first best-selling child-raising experts to promote
pre-school children’s reading. She did this by linking maternal-directed
promotion of reading with sensitive mothering. Literacy advice in her manual
is found under the heading “books”
rather than “reading,”
and books are listed along with music as tools for “playing and thinking”
.
“Whereas, every human being has a sense of rhythm,”
Leach pointed
out, and can enjoy music, “where books are concerned, the child really
does need your direct help”
(p. 432). Leach represented reading as a cultural
skill to be taught to children, in a way that idealized and reinforced the hegemony
of a middle-class, Anglo-Celtic literacy habitus. Leach offered detailed advice
for choosing and sharing books with young children, recognizing this as an aspect
of domestic literacy work vital to reproducing social and educational capital:
Almost every toddler enjoys looking at picture books as well as hearing stories read aloud. But the pre-school years are the ideal time to expand your child’s acquaintance with and affection for books and all they contain. They are going to be vital to his later education. (Leach, 1978, p. 432)