I sympathized with her situation and gently pointed out that my wife and I have the same situation. And just when I think there isn’t enough time to spare for the night’s reading, I told the parent, I ask myself, ‘Which is more precious, my time or my child? Which can I more easily afford to waste?’ (p. 35)

It is difficult to know what this mother, or other readers, were to make out of the veiled threat that by not reading to one’s children regularly, they were “wasting” them. This particular mother apparently walked away without saying a word. Trelease continued to argue that the key to creating a society of children who loved to read, were parents who were themselves experts in reading aloud, who could make the correct book selections, engage their children’s imaginations and above all, manage their domestic time effectively. While he directed his advice to fathers as well as mothers, the themes of bonding and time management were directed to mothers. In the tradition of the heart wrenching and moralistic didactic literature of the Nineteenth Century, Trelease recounted the story of a little girl who pretended she couldn’t read, so her mother would spend time with her. He quoted what she shared with him: “‘The only time all day when I have my mother all to myself is when she reads to me at bedtime.’” Trelease explained that the little girl was afraid her mother would go off “to read to her sisters and brother and leave her without that intimate sharing time each night” (Trelease, 1982, p. 36).

In its focus on mother’s time management and the promise of intimacy for lonely children, not to mention the use of guilt and threats, this advice seemed to be about much more than encouraging Americans and Canadians to read more. This advice also normalized the two-parent family in the face of changing families and changing gender roles. Trelease’s advice also recruited the discourse of domestic pedagogy which involved the regulation of domestic time and space, while the different material conditions that shaped families’ experience of time was silenced.

As we have seen in Chapter Five, the regulation of time and space is an important strategy in the discourse of domestic pedagogy. Time management skills differentiated “good” families from families that were drowning in the mediocrity of the “TV culture” (Trelease, 1982, pp. 21–23) and thus providing little of use or value to their children’s literacy knowledge. Trelease decried in each of his editions, and at various places in his books, the national problem of homes that were void of literate activity. Once this image was created, Trelease continued the lucrative project of “selling reading.” Certainly his books enjoyed enormous commercial success as they were publicized in parenting magazines, school newsletters, and reading advice up to the present.