The evidence of the literacy problem in industrialized countries with mass schooling systems has revealed that schools cannot alone meet this need. Families must therefore be recruited to do their bit, too. This is where the spotlight falls on the mother. She it is who must ensure that the young child arrives at school ready for school literacy, and preferably already literate. (Mace, 1998, p. 5)

Researchers such as Sticht (1995; 2000) have argued that while it may be true that “illiterate” mothers raised literate children in previous generations, such a situation is no longer possible in the current “knowledge economy” in which literacy skills are essential for work and for meaningful social participation, and there is growing demand for workers to continue to develop new and different literacy skills throughout their lives. Advocating the dictum, “teach the mother to reach the child,” Sticht argued that maternal education is the key to helping children to get an early start on literacy skills, and to sustaining their success through their schooling years. He suggested that the education of low income and new immigrant mothers is of particular importance, since the reading skills of low SES and minority children continue to fall behind their middle-class counterparts (Sticht, 2000).

Deborah Brandt (1999) challenged these popular beliefs through historical research linking literacy to the processes of economic change in the United States. She conducted life history interviews with over eighty people from three generations in a farming community in Wisconsin. While her research did not directly focus on the relationships between mothering and children’s literacy, the life experiences of those interviewed challenged the policy emphasis upon literacy as an individual cognitive skill influenced primarily by mothering practices and family structure. Brandt argued that “unrelenting economic change has become the key motivator for schools, parents, states and communities to raise expectations for literacy achievement” (p. 374), but that missing from this equation is the fact that individuals from communities that are increasingly economically and socially marginalized, such as rural farming communities, experience a concomitant devaluation in the identities and literacies they bring to schooling and work environments.