If I’m baking, I show Timothy how I read the recipe. I also show him labels on foods and words on TV. I think if he sees how reading is involved in everything we do on a daily basis, he’ll realize how important reading is. Of course, letting him pick the book at night to read or offering to read it during the day helps as well. (Douglas, 2002, p. 137)

Douglas’ advice similarly recommended the requisite bedtime story, lap time, home library, dramatizing of stories, and “taking time to read yourself so your toddler knows it’s important” (p. 133). But Douglas is slightly more creative in recommending that mothers weave reading into those dead air spaces when baby and mother are waiting for the microwave to ding, taking a bath, or “waiting in the bank line-up” (p. 135). Just as reading a novel while breastfeeding sounds slightly more compelling on paper than in practice, the promotion of the practice of reading to a toddler while in a moving line-up suggests that the practical realities of caring for young children are discarded for a greater cause. Reading to babies and toddlers took on a symbolic importance in these texts that suggests that reading is more about the performance and status of a middle-class literacy habitus, than about reading to get meaning from a text as part of the situatedness of everyday life.

In emphasizing routine, bonding, and the domestic sphere as a quiet domain inhabited by mother and child, this advice advocated strongly for an ideal that was likely far from reality. Some readers, it seems, were irritated by the unattainable domestic ideals laid out in advice. Although not related to literacy advice specifically, this sentiment was expressed by a mother in her review of What to Expect in the Toddler Years on Amazon.com. She titled her review: “I am having a ritual burning of this book today!”

My son is 8 months old and I have hardly opened this book. When I do, I just get angry. The advice is condescending, and unreasonable — such as saying that playpens are bad, any sugar, salt or white flour is bad (ruling out crackers and cookies as first foods), etc. Like I have nothing else to do but give my child quality interactive time while the maid cleans, the cook prepares organic, tasteless, fat-free meals, and the butler and secretary do all the errands, phone calls and bills. We all live in the real world, and so do our kids. We should enjoy life (including food and Teletubbies) and enjoy our kids, and it will all work out. Most of the advice that isn't insulting or silly is just common sense, you don't need a book for it. Just burn it! (and "What to Expect When Expecting,” too). There is some useful medical / developmental information, but you can get that from other sources (NJ mother, 2002).