For older children, parents were asked to sit down with their children and
“structure study time”
(Maynard, 1987, p. 37). Children also needed
a space “free of distraction,”
with the parent monitoring studying
by “making friendly check-ups every study session to interrupt daydreaming”
(p. 37). In “Underachievers and Over-Achievers: How to Help Them Resolve
Problems of School”
(Maynard, 1988) Chatelaine focused parents on the
need to become involved in their children’s everyday schooling experiences.
And certainly while schools were changing, the analysis in previous chapters
suggests that schools have always been changing, as have the ideal roles mothers
should adopt in support of their children’s literacy. However, many of
these changes were being written into education policy. In British Columbia,
The Sullivan Report (Sullivan, 1988), institutionalized Parent Advisory Councils,
providing parents with a legislated avenue for participation in their children’s
school.
Discourses do not erupt out of nowhere. As we will see in Chapter Seven, new
strategies normalize the “common-sense” beliefs of the past, resuscitating
them to new purposes. The idea that mothers have a moral obligation to do whatever
necessary to educate their children has much currency in advice. As Leach stated,
“unrealistic though this view of dedicated parenthood may be, I make no
apology for it. In these days of good contraception and world over-population,
there is a moral obligation to rear as well as we can, the children we have”
(1978, p. 8). Constructing “good mothering”
as both a choice, and
a moral obligation, continued a discourse of intensive mothering we first noted
in Child in 1831: “The care of children requires a great many sacrifices,
and a great deal of self-denial; but the woman who is not willing to sacrifice
a good deal in such a cause, does not deserve to be a mother”
(p. 23).
The advice analyzed in this chapter suggests a shift from “extensive services” to “intensive mothering” as a social response to the need for stimulating learning environments for children. It was possible, albeit in a limited context, and for a limited time, to envision a community-wide, socially supported approach to providing young children with the literacy and learning opportunities that mainstream culture felt important for them to learn. Indeed there was considerable suspicion and malaise surrounding parents that placed too much emphasis on reading and led their children into “unnatural pursuits.” This discontinuity in the reliance upon women’s domestic literacy work to effect desired social change is an important reminder that mothering discourses are not natural, but socially constructed.