Women's schooling is strongly related to child survival and other outcomes beneficial to children throughout the developing world, but the reasons behind these statistical connections have been unclear. In Literacy and Mothering, the authors show, for the first time, how communicative change plays a key role: Girls acquire academic literacy skills, even in low-quality schools, which enable them, as mothers, to understand public health messages in the mass media and to navigate bureaucratic health services effectively, reducing risks to their children's health. With the acquisition of academic literacy, their health literacy and health navigation skills are enhanced, thereby reducing risks to children and altering interactions between mother and child. Assessments of these maternal skills in four diverse countries - Mexico, Nepal, Venezuela, and Zambia - support this model and are presented in the book. Chapter 1 provides a brief history of mass schooling, including the development of a bureaucratic Western form of schooling. Along with the bureaucratic organization of healthcare services and other institutions, this form of mass schooling spread across the globe, setting new standards for effective communication - standards that are, in effect, taught in school. Chapter 2 reviews the demographic and epidemiological evidence concerning the effects of mothers' education on survival, health, and fertility. In this chapter, the authors propose a model that shows how women's schooling, together with urbanization and changes in income and social status, reduce child mortality and improve health. In Chapter 3, the authors examine the concept of literacy and discuss how its meanings and measurements have been changed by educational research of the last few decades. Chapter 4 introduces the four-country study of maternal literacy. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 present the findings, focusing on academic literacy and its retention (Chapter 5), its impact on maternal health literacy and navigation skills (Chapter 6), and changes in mother-child interaction and child literacy skills (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 presents a new analysis of school experience, explores policy implications, and recommends further research.

Managing Literacy, Mothering America accomplishes two monumental tasks. It identifies and defines a previously unstudied genre, the domestic literacy narrative, and provides a pioneering cultural history of this genre from the early days of the United States through the turn of the twentieth century. Domestic literacy narratives often feature scenes that depict women-mostly middle-class mothers-teaching those in their care to read, write, and discuss literature, with the goal of promoting civic participation. These narratives characterize literature as a source of shared knowledge and social improvement. Authors of these works, which were circulated in a broad range of publication venues, imagined their readers as contributing to the ongoing formation of an idealized American community. At the center of the genre's history are authors such as Lydia Sigourney, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Frances Harper, who viewed their writing as a form of teaching for the public good. But in her wide-ranging and interdisciplinary investigation, Robbins demonstrates that a long line of women writers created domestic literacy narratives, which proved to be highly responsive to shifts in educational agendas and political issues throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. Robbins offers close readings of texts ranging from the 1790s to the 1920s. These include influential British precursors to the genre and early twentieth-century narratives by women missionaries that have been previously undervalued by cultural historians. She examines texts by prominent authors that have received little critical attention to date-such as Lydia Maria Child's Good Wives--and provides fresh context when discussing the well-known works of the period. For example, she reads Uncle Tom's Cabin in relation to Harriet Beecher Stowe's education and experience as a teacher. Managing Literacy, Mothering America is a groundbreaking exploration of nineteenth-century U.S. culture, viewed through the lens of a literary practice that promoted women's public influence on social issues and agendas.

When it comes to parenting, more isn't always better-but it is always more tiring In Japan, a boy sleeps in his parents' bed until age ten, but still shows independence in all other areas of his life. In rural India, toilet training begins one month after infants are born and is accomplished with little fanfare. In Paris, parents limit the amount of agency they give their toddlers. In America, parents grant them ever more choices, independence, and attention. Given our approach to parenting, is it any surprise that American parents are too frequently exhausted? Over the course of nearly fifty years, Robert and Sarah LeVine have conducted a groundbreaking, worldwide study of how families work. They have consistently found that children can be happy and healthy in a wide variety of conditions, not just the effort-intensive, cautious environment so many American parents drive themselves crazy trying to create. While there is always another news article or scientific fad proclaiming the importance of some factor or other, it's easy to miss the bigger picture: that children are smarter, more resilient, and more independent than we give them credit for. Do Parents Matter? is an eye-opening look at the world of human nurture, one with profound lessons for the way we think about our families.

?As the scholars in Mothering and Literacies demonstrate, our parenting is better?as is our scholarship?when we are attentive to the varying forms communication takes. This is a book that asks us to consider the many ways in which mothering and literacy are intertwined, and it offers both support and a host of good ideas.? ?Alison Piepmeier, College of Charleston, Women's and Gender Studie

This book takes a distinctive approach to exploring the experiences and identities of minoritized Latinx mothers who are raising a child who is labeled as both an emergent bilingual and dis/abled. It showcases relationships between families and schools and reveals the myriad of ways in which school-based decisions regarding disability, language and academic placement impact family dynamics. Treating the mothers as experts, this book uses testimonios to explore not only what mothers know but also how they develop funds of knowledge and how they apply them to their child’s education. The stories shed light on how mothers perceive their child’s disability, how they engage with their child and the value they place on bilingualism. The narratives reveal the complex lives mothers lead and the ways in which they strive to meet the academic and socioemotional needs of their children, regardless of the financial, physical and emotional costs to them. This book has significant implications for researchers and professionals working in bilingual education, special education, inclusive education and disability studies in education.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Compelling narratives, testimonios, empirical research and literary representations on mothering make up Latina/Chicana Mothering. Dorsía Smith Silva has assembled a powerful collection of essays that get at the spirit of Chicana mothering. Diversity of thought and discipline is the beauty of this anthology as it extends the topic across studies in education, incarceration, violence, homelessness, popular culture, and feminine icons among others. This is essential reading in Chicana feminist work, women studies, ethnic studies, feminist theory, and motherhood.

A warm, wise, and urgent guide to parenting in uncertain times, from a longtime reporter on race, reproductive health, and politics In We Live for the We, first-time mother Dani McClain sets out to understand how to raise her daughter in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust -- even hostile -- society. Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy or birth than any other race; black mothers must stand before television cameras telling the world that their slain children were human beings. What, then, is the best way to keep fear at bay and raise a child so she lives with dignity and joy? McClain spoke with mothers on the frontlines of movements for social, political, and cultural change who are grappling with the same questions. Following a child's development from infancy to the teenage years, We Live for the We touches on everything from the importance of creativity to building a mutually supportive community to navigating one's relationship with power and authority. It is an essential handbook to help us imagine the society we build for the next generation.

A New York Times Bestseller In this third book in New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor-winning author Shannon Hale's Princess Academy series, Miri goes from student . . . to teacher! Miri has spent a year at the king's palace, learning all about being a proper princess. But instead of returning to her beloved Mount Eskel, Miri is ordered to journey to a distant swamp and start a princess academy for three sisters, cousins of the royal family. Unfortunately, Astrid, Felissa, and Sus are more interested in hunting and fishing than becoming princesses. As Miri spends more time with the sisters, she realizes the king and queen's interest in them hides a long-buried secret. She must rely on her own strength and intelligence to unravel the mystery, protect the girls, complete her assignment, and finally make her way home. Don't miss any of these other books from New York Times bestselling author Shannon Hale: The Princess Academy trilogy Princess Academy Princess Academy: Palace of Stone Princess Academy: The Forgotten Sisters The Books of Bayern The Goose Girl Enna Burning River Secrets Forest Born Book of a Thousand Days Dangerous Graphic Novels with Dean Hale Illustrated by Nathan Hale Rapunzel's Revenge Calamity Jack Illustrated by Victoria Ying Diana: Princess of the Amazons Illustrated by LeUyen Pham Real Friends Best Friends The Princess in Black series For Adults Austenland Midnight in Austenland The Actor and the Housewife

The Roadmap to Literacy Renewal of Literacy Edition is a reading, writing, and language arts program for Waldorf schools grades 1-3.