Indeed, to manage this large body of data there was a need to be systematic and inclusive, while a Foucauldian approach, while underlining the need to read broadly and deeply, is known for its eclectic and sometimes selective use of texts (Mills, 2000). Key decisions made along the way marked moments in this struggle. These mainly took the form of how many texts to include, from which sources, and the ways in which patterns of discourse formations across texts could be illustrated while allowing the reader to make sense of the data her or himself. And as noted above, one struggle was also to know when to stop analyzing. I attempted to resolve these challenges by moving out from canonic advice texts to more obscure ones, from the insights into mothering discourses gleaned in child raising histories, to a re-analysis of these histories from a literacy perspective. This produced an analysis that in some ways covered existing terrain in the scholarship linking mothering with nation-building and particularly schooling, but it also offered new perspectives and insights into the cultural and historic roots of contemporary common sense dictums that “parents are their first and most important educators.” The analysis also highlighted literacy as an important if often neglected site of women’s work.

My role as researcher/reader of archival records and texts suggested that the ethics of representation are as salient when working with documentary evidence as they are when working with interview participants. The work of creating parameters for my topic and selecting texts necessitated forays into archives that only tangentially promised insights. For example, the archival fonds of the Canadian Home School Federation were one promising source of literacy advice, because their area of work so squarely fit the lens of women’s domestic literacy work in the home and school, and because their longevity as an institution (founded in 1895) promised a source of continuous advice against which to gauge shifting themes and discourse strategies. As with all the literacy advice texts that were included in this analysis, the data I had access to in these fonds were limited by the choices of its authors as to what to include in their advice, and how they wished to represent themselves and the organizations and professions to which they dedicated so much of their lives. It was important to remember that archival records and advice texts are artifacts of individual decision making, biases, constructed identities, and the stories people chose to tell. My interpretations of these stories may bear little resemblance to the motives of their authors. For example, bringing feminist and historical lenses to my analysis, I was wont to interpret literacy advice as domesticating and regulatory — they aimed to educate mothers to support learning in homes, schools and communities to carry out desirable (though shifting) nation-building goals. But it is doubtful whether the authors of advice texts saw themselves as oppressors or would interpret their work as regulatory. They likely saw themselves as social reformers, sacrificing their time and energy, working hard on behalf of their community and their country, for the benefit of all.