| Perfect literacies: mothers as literacy models and teachers |
Supporting children’s literacy is a constant and everyday occupation.
Mothers require parenting education to practice intensive mothering as
a pre-condition for children’s early literacy development. |
Domestic sphere is a refuge from a demanding world. Literacy and brains
develop in a calm, stress-free home where literacy and learning activities
are prioritized and teachers and schools are closely monitored. |
Literacy advice assumes mothers stay at home with their young children
and have a partner to share housework to make more time for family literacy. |
| “Read while you breastfeed”: Mothering as embodied literacy
practice |
Attachment parenting and literacy are connected in the embodied practices
of storybook reading, and modeling literacy to children. |
Every moment is a moment to promote, model, and perform literacy activities,
including breastfeeding, lap storybook reading, and “tickle rhymes.”. |
The nuclear family is the ideal environment for practicing domestic
literacy. Families that vary from this norm are considered “at risk”
of literacy failure |
| Work your way out of poverty: domestic literacy as family power |
Mothers raising children alone and on low incomes need to work hard
to raise their parenting skills to the standards of intensive mothering.
This included improving their literacy skills. |
Powerful literacies in the home emulate those of schooling regardless
of differently situated families. |
For middle-class families, the stay-at-home mother provides the ideal
domestic literacy environment. For single, low-income mothers, getting
off welfare by doing paid work is the ideal way to support their children’s
literacy. |
| Mothering the early brain: literacy as nurturing baby care |
Supporting children’s literacy begins before birth and is dependent
upon attachment mothering practices. |
Every parent-child interaction is a learning experience with profound
consequences for future success in life, including literacy knowledge.
|
The ideals of the normal family and attachment mothering “builds”
brains and thus literacy skills. |