Although raising children who could read was deemed a necessary practice of Christian mothering, mothers were extolled not to force their children to learn or to display children’s abilities. This, argued Buffum, was a reflection of the “self love” of mothers and teachers, who “do not like that other children should read and write better than ours” (p. 100). Victorian society recognized the early years of children’s lives as vital to the formation of character. There was, however, much ambivalence over the form and purpose for “early training.” As an author in Mothers’ Magazine (1859) warned, “When I speak of early training, I refer not to intellectual but to moral training” (p. 88).

The achievement of high moral ideals was embedded in recommended family literacy practices, governed by space, time, and gender roles. In an article titled “Family and Social Reading” in Mothers’ Magazine (March, 1848), domestic reading or “social reading” among family and friends was recommended to promote family bonds. The absence of social reading in the home was identified as the source of domestic strife.

The benefits of social reading are manifold. Pleasures shared with others are increased by the partnership. A book is tenfold a book, when read in the company of beloved friends by the ruddy fire, on a wintry evening: and when our domestic pleasures are bathed in domestic affection. …Among a thousand means of making home attractive — What is more pleasing? What more rational? What more tributary to the fund of daily talk? What more exclusive of scandal and chatter? He would be a benefactor indeed, who should devise a plan for redeeming our evenings, and rallying the young men who scatter to clubs and taverns, and brawling assemblies. …Families which are in a state of mutual repulsion have no evening together over books or music. (pp. 77–78)