In an era that often reduces the purposes and implications of research to “what works” and the need to be “relevant,” literacy researchers, and educators in general, have come under pressure to produce findings that can be applied in homes and classrooms in the form of checklists and best practice criteria. Yet the study of childhood and family literacy from psychological and instrumental perspectives can yield only limited understanding. As Zuckerman (1993) observed, bringing sociological and historical perspectives to these topics teaches psychologists what “many historians take for granted and indeed know in their bones: that human behaviour is invincibly contingent and that social action is crucially conditioned by context” (p. 231). It remains a challenge for family literacy researchers and policy makers to embrace the discursive elements of gender, mothering, and family relationships as a starting point, rather than an afterthought of family literacy research.

Attend to the situated experiences of mothering as a basis for policy making and literacy research

The finding of this study that research itself is a powerful tool in reproducing mothering discourses that has implications for gender inequality suggests that, rather than narrowing the lenses that inform literacy research and policy, there is a need to expand these lenses to include the situated experiences of mothers. A good place to start is in the writings of women like Pat Guy, produced in participatory, women-positive literacy classes across North America (Guy, 2001, p. 5). Another promising starting point is in the expanding genre of mother-memoirs that document the “not so perfect lives” of women mothering in the “age of anxiety.” In a review of the book Three-Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family, Hilary Fowler introduces Christine, who like many women is a single mother working for an hourly wage, with no sick leave. When her children fall ill, she doesn’t have a list of friends of family to call and faces losing her job or leaving her young children home alone. “In this immense crunch there is barely a moment for tears” (Fowler, 2004):

I went to my room and cried. I didn't want my babies to see me upset. Since the divorce, they had seen me get emotional too many times — like when child support didn't come for a year and I ended up having to donate plasma in order to feed us. I knew I had to keep this job, for them. I also knew they needed me to nurse them back to health. The sobbing continued until Angela's next bout of vomiting, when I was called back to active duty. (Fowler, 2004, p. 59)