Maintaining that his book was not about teaching children how to read, but rather teaching children how to want to read, Trelease claimed that parents who pressured their children to read and be successful at school were performing “suburban child abuse.” He then went on to outline another new literacy problem: boys were not reading. He thus directed his advice to fathers, and linked their lack of involvement in their boys’ education with the high level of boys attending remedial reading classes. The premise guiding his new edition was that the most important predictor of children’s scholastic success was reading aloud to children. Trelease pointed out that thanks to the teaching strategies and focus on reading in schools that emerged from A Nation At Risk (United States National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), reading scores were steadily increasing. But he joined with other reading advice experts in reminding readers that their improved skills were not good enough, because “we live in a world that is getting more complicated by the hour” (Trelease, 1989, p. 6). Trelease adapted his advice to the “new knowledge economy” political discourse, suggesting that reading to children would not only improve or increase their desire to read, but also promote intelligence, culture, knowledge, and flexibility in a changing economy. He deemed the steady decline in American’s knowledge of history, appreciation for culture, and the apparent inability of Americans to deal with many kinds of information, was caused by the fact that children, particularly boys, did not choose to read as a pastime outside of school. This, however, could be remedied if parents promoted reading at home and limited children’s access to technology. He included additional advice in this edition on the importance of reading to babies, to “condition” them to the world of books, reflecting the trend in the 1980s of advice books for raising “smart” babies. Bonding, emotional intelligence, academic achievement, and happiness were promised for parents who read one-to-one with their children daily, or at the very least, two or three times a week. The management of domestic time and the importance of physical closeness in “good” story book reading suggested family literacy as an embodied practice.

The emphasis on reading as a central practice in promoting “success” in life and “school readiness” as well as “bonding” is evident in advice provided by Spock and Leach, described above as well as newcomers to the “advice” scene, such as Eisenberg, Murkoff and Hathaway’s What to Expect series, first published in 1984. These popular manuals (What to Expect in the First Year sold 5.6 million copies in the USA and Canada) were modeled on the “woman to woman, over the fence” advice that their middle-class readers may no longer have had access to or had been warned not to trust. What to Expect has been criticized for its hetero-normative, patriarchal bias, particularly in its discussions of pre-natal care and child birth (McCullough, 2004, p. 104). The assumption that women had choices to stay off work after their babies were born underpinned the discourse of the “normal family” in their literacy advice. Structured around “questions” asked by fictitious mothers and a few fathers, advice on reading was found in What to Expect When You’re Expecting (1991). One “parent” asked, “I have a friend … whose husband reads to her tummy every night to give their baby a love of literature. Isn’t all this nonsense?” (p. 186). The authors replied: