Kirsten Hutchison

Mothers in Family Literacy: a Critical Feminist Analysis Kirsten Hutchison

This research addresses the invisibility of mothers in the Family Literacy movement and explores the work of the mother in maintaining and extending family literacy practices. Despite the centrality of mothers in their children's education, mothers are largely invisible in the research literature theorising and describing family and intergenerational literacy practices and programs, or they are viewed as somehow deficient in their literacy practices. In this study I aim to address this absence and offer a feminist analysis of the Family Literacy movement through an exploration of the mother's literacy practices within families. I make visible the complexity of the literacy work performed by mothers within families, and extend further feminist discussion on the body through an analysis of the embodiment of language and literacy practices within the mother/child reading dyad. I reconceptualise family literacy programs within a post structuralist feminist framework, and suggest pedagogies which acknowledge the multiple subjectivities of women as mothers, learners and teachers of their children.