Hays believed that the ideology of intensive mothering is intimately related to the cultural contradiction that characterizes motherhood in the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first Centuries. She argued that the logic of late capitalist economic systems that value women’s availability to the public sphere of the work force conflicts with the situated, diverse, and time-dependent nature of mothering associated with the “private” sphere of the home. Mothers are increasingly pulled between the conflicting demands of these two spheres, even as the norm for “what counts” as appropriate mothering has become increasingly intense. Andrea O’Reilly drew on the distinction between the “institution” of intensive motherhood and the everyday work of mothering in this way:

The discourse of intensive mothering becomes oppressive not because children have needs, but because we, as a culture, dictate that only the biological mother is capable of fulfilling them, that the children’s needs must always come before those of the mother, and that children’s needs must be responded to around the clock with extensive time, money energy…I believe it is these dictates that make motherhood oppressive to women, not the work of mothering per se. (O’Reilly, 2004, p. 2)

Taken together, these studies suggest that mothering, and advice to mothers, is socially and culturally constituted. While advice may at times offer comfort, support, and solace to mothers looking for affirmation, it is also predicated on the belief, shared perhaps by mothers themselves, that mothers can never be quite good enough. In light of Hays’ compelling arguments, it seems important to consider in the present study the implications of the discourse of intensive mothering for literacy advice. This is perhaps best explored in the context of feminist scholarship on the relationships between mothering and literacy.