Calls for parents to take more responsibility for their children’s literacy and language development were silent about the fact that in most cases it would be mothers who would take on these responsibilities. For mothers feeling the stress, there was more advice, such as “Guilt: How to Stop Blaming Yourself” (Maynard, 1990b) and “High Expectations, When Parents Expect Too Much” (Maynard, 1992). In support of policy goals to help parents take up their increasing responsibilities for their children’s education experiences, Gray (1992) offered, “The Parent-Teacher Conference, How to Get the Most Out of It”.

The second edition of Leach’s (1988) Your Baby and Child suggested that stimulating children’s literacy in early childhood had grabbed the attention of the mainstream publishing market even before the declaration of the International Literacy Year. Leach now featured a new section on early learning with detailed advice (presented as scenarios) for supporting children’s literacy. This edition opened with a commentary about the place of mothers and families in “today’s world”, signaling broader social malaise about the well-being of the family in an age of declining social supports and pressure on parents to be “even better parents”:

There are even women who, having fought to “have their cake and eat it too” feel guilt because they are managing to work and care yet feel that they do neither “properly.” Fathers fare no better. For every chauvinistic male who still believes that “babies are women’s work” another wants to share his child’s life and up-bringing and cannot do so because, whatever its professed ideals, society still puts work before people. And even when the social practicalities of life run smoothly, there are couples everywhere castigating themselves for not being “really good parents.” We could describe those parents but they are centrally mythical. We have edged parents into a no-win situation: an emotional trap. Children do not need superhuman, perfect parents. They have always managed with good enough parents: the parents they happened to have. (Leach, 1988, pp. 5–6)

Readers would be mistaken to think that these comforting words signaled Leach’s abandonment of intensive mothering as the best form of mothering for children. Indeed, if parents were already “good enough,” they ostensibly would not feel the need to read her book. While “reading” did not appear in the index to this edition, Leach described a “typical” parent’s preoccupations with giving their pre-school child a “head start” in learning: