Creating the valuable: reading as a matter of health and successful parenthood

ABSTRACT

There have been increasing demands to improve Swedish children’s reading habits, triggered by poor PISA results in 2013, and public healthcare has stepped in as a strong reading-promoting actor. Drawing on the emerging field of valuation research in STS, the paper explores the values enacted in health-related information brochures about reading that are distributed to all Swedish parents at various times of their children’s lives. The analysis demonstrates how the lack of reading books is enacted as a public health problem that requires prevention and intervention of public healthcare. Health is thus recruited as a stabilising actor in the process of determining the value and importance of reading and where the problem of non-reading of books becomes a private matter for families to solve. The analysis also shows how instances of health-promoting intentions of doing good can in effect be marginalising by viewing specific people as less valuable.

KEYWORDS:

• Reading
• valuation studies
• actor-network theory
• folded valuations
• science and technology studies (STS)

Valuations of reading

The article takes as a starting point the recent public debate about reading books, or rather the lack of reading books, which has emerged as a growing problem in media and politics in Sweden (Kulturrådet [Swedish Arts Council], 2015). Drawing on the emerging science and technology studies (STS) field of valuation studies (Asdal, 2014; Doganova & Muniesa, 2015; Dussauge, Helgesson, & Lee, 2015; Fourcade, 2011; Helgesson & Muniesa, 2013; MacKenzie, Muniesa, & Siu, 2007), I explore two specific cases in which reading practices are produced as a public health issue. The purpose of this paper is to unpack and explore the values of reading enacted in health-related information given to Swedish parents, and the potential implications of these values.

The empirical material in this study consists of two kinds of information brochures distributed to all Swedish parents of 0–7-year-old children, one from public healthcare and the other from a private foundation aimed at promoting health issues among children of school age. By encouraging parents to read more to their children, the brochures aim to create better opportunities for children to succeed in school and society. An important task in the research field of education is to scrutinise and problematise the societal legitimations and valuations of phenomena that are constructed as efforts to foster a healthier, more successful and valuable population, since these are always co-created with what it means to be legitimate, valuable and successful, and thus part of the ordering of society (see Clarke, 2002; Edwards, Ivanič, & Mannion, 2009; Graff, 2010; Larson, 2007). I decided on these brochures as empirical material because of their wide distribution and potential impact on all parents in Sweden with children of certain ages. In this respect, the brochures can be regarded as key actors in the enactment of reading as a matter of public concern, and thus it is important to critically examine the view of reading that they convey.

Introducing the field of valuation studies to education research offers the means to explicitly investigate the practices and outcomes of valuation, where students, teachers, things, pedagogies and technologies are valuated and translated into measurable units. It also affords a way to examine what politics and values are enacted in these practices. Lamont (2012) argues that there is an urgent need to understand the dynamics of creating worth, in order to make visible the dominant definitions of value that sustain hierarchies: ‘What can be done to ensure that a larger proportion of the members of our society can be defined as valuable?’ (p. 202). In line with this notion of creating value, I draw on the work of Hamilton (2012, 2016), who suggests that literacy studies need to further explore how public narratives about literacy take shape, how various social actors are mobilised around these narratives and how they are connected to common and rarely questioned values. This study responds to this call.

The Swedish setting

In the aftermath of the 2013 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), where the Swedish students’ scores were worse than anticipated, especially in the area of reading, government authorities (e.g. the Swedish National Agency for Education and the Swedish Arts Council) were commissioned to increase their efforts to promote reading.¹ Although literacy rates in Sweden are among the highest in the world (Skolverket [Swedish National Agency for Education], 2012), and Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) tests² show that Sweden is significantly above average in reading, writing, information technology and computer skills, there has been an alignment in demands and suggestions from a number of seemingly disparate sets of actors, both from public interests, such as public service television and the Swedish Arts Council, and market-driven actors, such as writers and publishers, to improve Swedish children’s reading habits, especially through parents reading books aloud to their children. There have for example been several government initiatives, such as the Swedish Arts Council’s project ‘Book Start’ [Bokstart], and recurrent appointments of ‘Reading Ambassadors’ and ‘Reading Coaches’.³ Non-profit associations have initiated various reading projects for children, with strong financial support from private, market-driven actors such as the fast-food chain McDonald’s (see Persson, 2012). Public healthcare has also stepped in as a strong reading-promoting actor. When examining the practices that valuate reading as something beneficial, it becomes obvious that these are not neutral activities, there are political and economic interests involved. The empirical material for this study emerges from a large amount of information drawn from public texts and policy documents, and from interviews with writers, politicians and researchers from news, social media, and personal communication sources. From the larger body of material, I selected the information brochures from public health care and the Parents’ handbook as outcomes of the valuation processes at work, in which reading is evaluated and translated into, for example, word comprehension, vocabulary, democratic abilities and health. In the analysis, I demonstrate how the two types of brochures naturalise reading in a specific way, enacting some moral and political values about reading, parenting and success, while supressing others.

The article is organised as follows. First, I outline the theoretical and methodological approach used in this study. Next, I present the results of the analysis of how reading is enacted as a moral and health problem. A concluding discussion follows, in which I elaborate on the potential consequences of the ideas, beliefs and values embedded in the enactment of reading in the brochures. In the discussion, I argue that: (i) health is recruited as an explanatory and stabilising actor in the process of evaluation: (ii) reading becomes a private issue for parents to solve in the home environment, thus excluding schools; (iii) the way that reading is put forward as a solution to different problems, such as insufficient vocabulary or academic failure, obscures other important explanations for different opportunities in school and society; and (iv) the intention of creating better readers and more successful students can in effect be marginalising in the sense that it relies on narrow definitions of reading, readers, parents and success, and consequently leads to specific people being defined as less valuable.

Theoretical and methodological framework: creating truths and values

The field of STS is primarily concerned with examining how knowledge of and facts about the world are produced and naturalised; that is, how a phenomenon is produced as a matter of course and thus becomes difficult to question, and the ways in which values and politics become invisible in this process (Latour, 1987, 1993). This notion implies that things that appear as naturalised (that is, factual, closed, readymade and stable) should be analysed in terms of the ways they are settled, that is, through the stabilising mechanisms of fact, science and truth making (Latour, 2007, p. 120; see also Dussauge et al., 2015). These mechanisms are created, negotiated and agreed upon by actors with specific interests and motives. The naturalisation of objects and phenomena, including texts and numbers, also means forgetting about how they are created and stripping away the contingent and situated nature of things (Bowker & Star, 1999, p. 299). Accordingly, this study’s analytical approach is to examine the ways in which reading is stabilised as something natural and intrinsically good by focusing on the stabilising actors at play in the brochures, for example numbers and quantifications. These quantifications are efficient in stabilising ‘objective facts’, since they suggest objectivity and transparency, ‘strengthened by the historical relationship between numbers and rationality, objectivity and control’ (de Wilde & Franssen, 2016, p. 505; see Hacking, 1990; Porter, 1995). Moreover, for whom the issue of a lack of reading is a concern is not a given fact, since the construction of the problem also includes the construction of a recipient with a need or a lack that requires attention (Marres, 2005).

In the analysis, I draw on the growing interdisciplinary STS field of valuation studies (Asdal, 2008; Dussauge et al., 2015; Helgesson & Muniesa, 2013; Strandvad, 2014), and on the intersection between governmentality studies and actor-network theory (Asdal, 2008; Sundqvist & Elam, 2009). In the valuation approach, value (as well as what counts as value) is regarded as something that happens in practice, not as a prefixed and intrinsic entity that precedes the valuation process. Thus, values are perceived as inseparable from their active articulation (Dewey, 1913, p. 269; see Muniesa, 2012) and as ‘enacted, ordered, and displaced rather than as fixed and constitutive forces’ (Dussauge et al., 2015, p. 268). An important concept that has inspired the analysis is that of folded valuations (Helgesson, 2016; Helgesson & Lee, 2017; see also Edwards et al., 2009). This analytical concept is used to illustrate the ways that different values and valuations are co-created and strengthen one another. Thus, the unpacking carried out in the analysis is a form of unfolding, conducted to determine how the values and valuations hold together and are made strong.

The way the valuation approach addresses value as contingent aligns well with the logic of actor-network theory, where values and other qualitative aspects of reality are explored as relational effects. Both approaches differ from other ways of studying valuation, such as commodification theories, where nature or things not originally produced for sale are given a monetary value (Castree, 2003), or Bourdieu’s ideas about cultural capital, since they focus primarily on how value and valuation are co-produced in practice. Another difference is actor-network theory’s distribution of agency to a more heterogeneous set of actors (Johnson, 1988; Latour, 2007), and the lack of given structures (e.g. capitalism or neoliberalism) as starting points for investigation, which are instead treated as effects in networked relations. My study addresses issues of power from the intersection of analytical recourses between actor-network theory and governmentality studies (Asdal, 2008; Sundqvist & Elam, 2009), where power and the exercise of authority are studied as relational and where critical questions are posed about how problems are defined, by and for whom and for what purpose (Sundqvist & Elam, 2009). The concept of governmentality originates from Foucault (1991) and implies that power is always involved in knowledge and fact production. Governmentality contributes to the analysis by making manifest the power involved in the production of who and what should be governed, and what their lacks are (Milani, 2009). More specifically, it provides a frame for understanding how expertise offers specific formulas to solve problems and to create ‘mentalities of rules’ that will govern individual and collective conduct (Rose, 1996; Rose & Miller, 2008). For power to function, the links between actors must be created and maintained; power is thus viewed as an effect of these links, and actor-network theory offers a means to examine the different and sometimes unexpected ways and mundane places where power operates.

In line with the theoretical framework outlined above, Hamilton’s (2001, 2011, 2012, 2016) extensive literacy research provides the present study with a further perspective on the ways that power operates within literacy discourses and in processes that construe the value of literacy. Drawing on actor-network theory, Hamilton (2012) demonstrates how representations of literacy, such as numbers or metaphors, are embedded in everyday practices and implied in the ordering of social life. These representations circulate in and coordinate social action and also the actors involved. Of importance is Hamilton’s claim that metaphors that construe literacy as a thing rather than as a relational process ‘obscure how literacy is implicated in sustaining or disrupting relations of power’ (Hamilton, 2012, p. 136). However, whereas Hamilton addresses a broad set of literacy practices, I focus on specific narratives related to reading books, and explicitly analyse instances where values associated with reading are enacted.

The analysis has been conducted in the following way: first, I examined how the different actors at play in the texts contribute to enacting certain values of reading, for example libraries, parents, books, Swedish writers, the vitamins metaphor, research results and more. The way in which reading is enacted in the case, whether in numbers or through other materialities, is always a co-production of actors. Second, I investigated the connections between the valuations and values in the texts, and the ways that they fold together; for example, between the number of words a 17-year-old has at his or her disposal, and democratic values. This part of the analysis involved examining how stabilising mechanisms, such as quantifications of reading and vocabulary, help enrol some actors while excluding other possibly relevant actors (Hamilton, 2012, pp. 23–25). Enrolment (Callon, 1986) refers to the social and material work required to make actors connect and perform in networks (see also Clarke, 2002; Hamilton, 2011), and this analytical concept has made visible the deficiencies and lacks that are produced in relation to the solutions suggested to solve the public problem of non-reading, and in the experts that are called for, that is: ‘linked into the devices for the conduct of conduct’ (Rose, 1996, p. 350).

Reading as health, success and morality

The following section consists of four subsections in which I present the results of the analysis. In the first part, the focus is on the ABC brochures distributed by children’s health clinics, and on the ways that reading, especially reading in the home, is constituted as a remedial matter of public health. The second subsection focuses on the Parents’ Handbook, and the ways in which a lack of reading becomes a moral issue relating to the children’s health and future success. In the two subsequent subsections, I analyse and discuss both types of brochures in parallel, with a focus on how reading enacts specific values in various relations, and on how quantifications of reading fold into the values of good parenthood and the children’s present and future wellbeing.

ABC brochures and books as remedy

In Sweden, all children, from newborn babies to school-aged, are called to regular and free health check-ups at public healthcare clinics for children (Barnavårdscentralen [BVC]), starting from every week, then every two or three months, to every year until the children are six years old. The preventative work of child healthcare emanates from two main principles – universal efforts offered to all children and targeted efforts for all children if and when required.⁴ The check-ups are voluntary, but it is highly unusual for parents to skip them,⁵ so they can be viewed as more or less mandatory (i.e. normal). At BVC, the children’s weight and height are measured; they are offered hearing tests and visual checks, and given vaccination shots. The BVC’s specialist nurses also give advice about the children’s diet, sleep habits and overall health status. At these check-ups, vitamin D drops are provided free to all children during their first two years to prevent a deficiency and the related health problems or diseases, for example, rickets. In recent years, the nurses at BVC have also handed out information brochures called ABC drops [ABC droppar], which contain advice on how parents should read to their children. The use of drops as a metaphor is significant, since drops are how the doses of medicine, or vitamins, are dispensed. The brochures are age-related and come in five versions: ABC drops: For your baby; ABC drops: From 8 months to 2 years; ABC drops: For your 2- and 3-year-old; ABC drops: For your 4-year-old; and ABC drops: For your 5-year-old.⁶

The ABC brochures provide information on what parents can do to encourage their children in language development, specifically by reading to them. Similar to other universal healthcare interventions for children, such as the distribution of vitamin D drops or weight-control measures, reading emerges as one answer to the political aim to have a healthy population. In the brochures, reading is enacted as both a vitamin and a cure. For example, one of the brochures states: ‘[It is in] the conversation about what has been read that the child’s language is nourished’ (ABC drops: For your 4-year-old). Not only do the metaphors in the brochure titles equate reading with essential vitamins, but reading is also enacted several times as nourishment, as the quote above shows.

Most importantly, reading is represented as part of health in the setting itself. The information brochures are distributed by BVC and form part of the obligatory information and health check-ups and are discussed in the regular follow-up questions about the children’s health;⁷ thus the setting itself helps stabilise reading to the children as a health issue. According to the national guidelines for the children’s healthcare programme (see endnote 3), the obligatory hand-outs to parents at BVC clinics concern preventative measures and health risks, such as information on the Swedish vaccination programme, smoking and alcohol, infections and injuries, children’s rights, healthy food, and reading. In a manner similar to how the other issues are connected to children’s and parents’ health, the analysis of the ABC brochures shows that reading books also becomes essential for a healthy child, and public healthcare takes responsibility for providing information, follow-ups and contact with libraries. Experts, in this case librarians, are enrolled in this matter of concern, although other educational experts such as preschool teachers are not. Thus, the public library becomes a strong and stabilising actor in the reading-as-health network, as can be seen in the following extract: ‘Since 2014, the libraries have undertaken a special mission to strengthen children’s language development and stimulate reading’ (ABC drops: For your 4-year-old). At many BVC clinics, each child receives a gift in the form of a coupon that can be exchanged for a children’s book in the library. ‘At the visit [to the library,] you will find out where you can find books for the youngest, where the “parents’ shelf” is and if there will be “baby-book talks” or song and rhythm sessions for the youngest’ (ABC drops: For your baby). In these examples, it is clear that libraries and ‘stimulated reading’ are needed to develop children’s language skills, and here BVC coordinates and supports the relation between parents and libraries.

Overall, the practices that connect reading to healthcare can be understood as constituting a kind of ‘medicalisation’ (Conrad, 1992) of reading, given that it is framed as an issue that needs to be handled with medical help. However, as shown above, such medicalisation involves not only medical professionals but also other types of experts, including librarians. Reading books is enacted as part of being a healthy child, in both the metaphors of vitamins and nourishment and the enrolment of healthcare settings and libraries.

Parents’ handbook and the quantification of reading

Active School (Aktiv Skola) is a private foundation that works to attain a higher degree of physical, mental, emotional and psychosocial health among pupils (https://www.aktivskola.org). In recent years, Active School has distributed a booklet called the Parents’ Handbook (Föräldrahandboken)⁸ to parents of children beginning their first year at school. The booklet, which is distributed only in Swedish, informs parents about health issues, such as a healthy diet, sleep and physical activity, and offers advice on children’s worries about starting school, achievement stress, gaming and bullying. The brochure also contains a three-page section about reading, which is included in the analysis.

The information provided in the handbook includes several quantifications of reading, for example: ‘35% of the parents in Sweden read regularly to their children’; and ‘80% of the children’s vocabulary comes from books’ (Parents’ Handbook, p. 26). These quantifications of reading books are folded into the values that are enacted (Helgesson, 2016), such as good parenting and successful children, thus co-creating values. This means that the quantifications of reading contribute to stabilising and strengthening the values about reading that are also enacted, and in reverse, the values stabilise the quantifications. One makes the other more true or natural, as I will present in the following paragraphs.

The Parents’ Handbook depicts a white, blonde woman and a white, blonde child sitting next to each other with a book in front of them, while smiling and looking into each other’s eyes. The picture contributes to the naturalisation and normalisation of the white middle class as representatives of health and success. Two overlapping text frames are included in the picture. One frame offers advice on how to create a ‘reading zone’, where closeness and shared moments are emphasised:

• Make the reading time even cosier;

• Build a reading hut/tent;

• Make fruit salad;

• Light candles and take out blankets (Parents’ Handbook, p. 27).

The other frame presents quantifications of reading:

When you begin school as a 7-year-old, you have on average 7000 words in your vocabulary […] [If] you do not read books or listen [to readings] regularly, you will [only] have between 15,000 and 17,000 words in your vocabulary when you are 17 years old […] If you, on the other hand, have read books, newspapers and other texts regularly, your vocabulary [would] have been filled with 50,000 words. (Parents’ Handbook, p. 27)

Although other kinds of texts are included (e.g. newspapers), books are explicitly situated as the most important for word acquisition: ‘Research shows that around 80% of children’s vocabulary comes from books’ (Parents’ Handbook, p. 26).⁹

In the Parents’ Handbook, reading aloud is emphasised as important for word acquisition. The estimation is that children’s books increase the parents’ amounts of words, perhaps filling gaps in their vocabulary. A book therefore appears to function as both a remedy for children’s limited vocabulary and a supplement for parents’ insufficient vocabulary. It would not be enough for parents to talk to the children if 80% of the children’s vocabulary comes from books. Similar to many other quantifications in the brochure, it is difficult, if not impossible, to trace the cited statistics to their sources.¹⁰ Nevertheless, seemingly objective and neutral measurements occur in these valuations of reading, enacting the successful reading, the successful child and the care-taking and moral parent, and the measurements and values fold into and feed each other. The amount of vocabulary folds into the enactment of a good parent; books become enacted as desired reading materials; reading is enacted as the source of vocabulary; vocabulary is valuated as a specific number of words; and a large vocabulary is deemed important. Thus, the numbers calculated from the measurements cannot be separated from the values they enact.

Although quantifications of reading occur primarily in the Parents’ Handbook, the same way of enacting reading books as leading to an enlarged vocabulary is also found in all the ABC brochures. For example: ‘By talking a lot to each other, telling stories and reading aloud, you contribute to your child’s vocabulary. A large vocabulary is the best investment for the child’s future language and reading development’ (ABC drops: For your 4-year-old). Accordingly, these valuations connect to the parents’ responsibility to provide for their children’s future, and therefore to the risk posed by neglecting to read books. Another example of this is the following quote: ‘20% of the pupils who leave compulsory school [lack] the ability to read a newspaper properly … vocabulary is one of the key factors for academic success … In other words, it is crucial to read to children from an early age’ (Parents’ Handbook, p. 26). In these examples, not only is the problem of non-reading stabilised (partly by being translated into numbers), but the expansion of children’s vocabulary is also presented as a primary contribution to academic success, and reading newspapers seems to be a means of measuring both vocabulary and academic success.

Overall, the Parents’ Handbook provides an example of how parenthood, reading and children’s future wellbeing (e.g. a quantified vocabulary) are stabilised and naturalised by folding measurements and values into each other. The connections between the actors seems especially strong in the brochures when reading books is translated into quantifications like those cited above, thus stabilising values (see Muniesa, 2007). In the following section, by drawing on both types of brochure, I will extend the analysis to demonstrate the ways in which the home is pedagogised¹¹ to meet the demands of raising a healthy child, and how this seems to require a particular type of parent and specific books.

Pedagogisation of the home and fear of failure

The text about reading in the Parents’ Handbook begins: ‘When Albert Einstein was asked about how society could equip itself for the future, he answered, “Read to the children!” Unfortunately, fewer and fewer parents regularly read to their children’ (p. 26). This quote situates parents as part of a societal problem; over time, they risk obstructing their children’s opportunities to succeed in school and hamper society’s development. Connecting reading to both democracy and responsible and aware citizens is not confined to this booklet. It is a manifest idea and argument expressed in PISA¹² and other instances where the same numbers appear, for example, in news programmes or interviews with writers.¹³ The organisation behind the Parents’ Handbook bases its arguments about reading on the risk of achieving poor PISA results, and the values that are emphasised in, for example, PISA thus fold into the Swedish health campaign. However, the ABC brochures and the Parents’ Handbook specifically displace the pedagogic responsibility for reading books from schools to homes. Parents and libraries (not schools and preschools) are thus enrolled in the coordination of social action. Reading becomes an increasingly moral issue for parents, given that it is connected to their children’s health and future welfare. It also involves taking responsibility for their children who might leave school without the ability ‘to read a newspaper properly’ (Parents’ Handbook, p. 26) and with considerably less vocabulary than children who read.

Moreover, a specific parent and specific books are enacted to deal with the problem. Both the ABC brochures and the Parents’ Handbook instruct parents about reading more often, what and how to read, and how to listen to and discuss matters with their children. There is an inscribed reader in the texts, a presupposed user of the brochures’ ideas and instructions, with prescribed qualities and behaviours (Johnson, 1988). The people intended to read the ABC brochures are at the same time people who need to be lectured on how to read to children; however, they need to be rather experienced readers themselves. The texts in the brochures are quite long and in small print, and the vocabulary is often advanced, including several specialist linguistic terms. Parents with reading problems, or with little experience of reading in general or reading in Swedish, are arguably excluded from the moment they open the brochures.

The inscribed reader or parent is enacted as someone who likes and is enthusiastic about reading books: ‘Choose what you like to read; your reading enthusiasm is contagious, and this period is when you create a common frame of reference, which you will return to in the future’ (ABC drops: For your 5-year-old). Parents’ interest in and enthusiasm for reading are thus taken for granted. Yet, at the same time, the brochures enact insecurity about reading in the right way, about what books to read and about how to read with expression and explain and discuss the topics. For example, parents are instructed on how to sit when they read to their children: ‘Eye contact is crucial for communication. Sit next to each other with the book in front of you, so you can both look at the picture and each other’ (ABC drops: From 8 months to 2 years).

Thus, the materials are ambiguous in the enactment of the parents. An ideal is presented – the white, middle-class body gets to represent the healthy body, enthusiastic parents with the required time and an interest in books. At the same time, the information brochures show parent-related uncertainty and trust issues, in that they will not know what to do, how to read and how to choose books. There is also ambiguity in the types of books enacted as good reading. On one hand, there are good books and a right way of reading; on the other hand, books seem to play an instrumental role in terms of their capacity to transmit and generate vocabulary. Throughout the texts in the brochures, there is clearly a notion that certain books are preferable and that you can read to your child in a right or a wrong way. Parents need the guidance of experts and healthcare providers to enable them to choose the right books and read to their children properly, that is, to govern their behaviour (see Rose, 1996; Rose & Miller, 2008).

To recap, the societal problem of non-reading becomes a private matter for parents to solve at home, and it requires a specific type of parent to manage the task. In all the materials, and in the enrolment of actors in the reading-as-health issue, several possible actors or methods are excluded, for example popular media and oral interactions. School is also excluded, other than as an ominous finishing line, a point when the children’s reading, vocabulary and academic success appear as settled, depending on their home environment and the choices that their parents have had the chance to make. I discuss the consequences of these moral and political enactments in the final section of this paper.

Moral aspect of time

The Parents’ Handbook reports a dramatic decrease in the percentage of parents reading to their children, from 74% to 35% over a 10-year period. This assertion is an interesting example of how numbers cooperate in stabilising truths and values at the same time, not only about reading books but also about parenthood. When tracing the presented statistics, it turns out that the decrease is not as obvious as the figures suggest, since they primarily show that reading to children might not be as regular as it had been.¹⁴ Therefore, the regularity of reading seems to be constituted as the problem, not the percentage of parents who read to their children. Accordingly, performing the activity several times a week is insufficient; parents have to make reading a daily routine to be among the 35% enacted as reading parents. The ABC brochures state: ‘Try to make time for daily reading and talking to your child’ (ABC drops: For 2- and 3-year-olds). In this example as well, the quantification of time spent on reading folds into the enacted values of good parenting.

In both kinds of brochures, reading aloud is enacted as crucial; parents are instructed to read aloud to their children and to not stop doing so too soon: ‘At this age, the daily reading and talking time has surely become routine’ (ABC drops: For your 5-year-old); ‘Even if the child can read by [himself/herself], you should not stop reading aloud too soon’ (Parents’ Handbook, p. 26). Presence and attention are also seen as important:

When you read aloud, you get the opportunity to wind down together with your child; talk about the day; and experience joy, sorrow and excitement in the books. The children appreciate your total presence, and you signal that both they and the activity are important. (Parents’ Handbook, p. 26)

These examples illustrate how reading as health is enacted as morality and wellbeing, intertwined with good parenthood as demonstrated through the time spent, parental attention and presence. Reading to their children is manifested as a way for parents to show the children not only that the activity of reading is important, but also that the children themselves are important.

Overall, the issue of the time spent on reading is interwoven with the conceptualisation of specific parents who have the possibility or choice to devote time to reading to their children every day, not every second day. Belonging to the 35% is important. The values enacted when vocabulary is measured and quantified and when parenthood is measured in terms of the amount of time they spend on reading aloud fold into and impinge on each other (see Helgesson, 2016). In this sense, the values contribute to stabilising non-reading and non-readers as a public problem, and to naturalising all parents as having the possibility to make this choice.

In my analysis of the ABC brochures and the Parents’ Handbook, I have demonstrated how reading is enacted as a matter of public health, something that appears neutral and apolitical although permeated with specific values and politics. The analysis illustrates that the way in which reading has seemingly become measurable and valuated in the form of vocabulary acquisition and range folds into the valuation of successful children and good parenting. It is claimed that reading provides a massively extended vocabulary that will bring children future success in school. Future success thus equals academic success, and academic success is valuated in vocabulary knowledge. The analysis shows that when reading to children is reduced to a matter of time or to individual choice, political issues such as economic distribution and inequities are obscured. It also obscures other explanations for children’s lack of reading habits, vocabulary and academic possibilities, such as economic conditions, the educational level of parents and differential access to the Swedish language. The brochures are political in this respect, rearranging and redistributing a public matter of concern to individual homes and families (see Hamilton, 2012).

In the final section of this paper, I discuss the consequences of the way that parents are enacted, of non-reading being turned into a private family problem and how the intention of doing good can in effect be marginalising. Additionally, I argue that the way in which reading is put forward as a solution to different problems, such as the lack of vocabulary or cultural references or academic success, obscures other important explanations for the different levels of opportunity available in school and society.

Discussion: making people valuable

Taking the anxieties caused by Swedish children’s poor results in the 2013 PISA as a starting point, I have demonstrated how the lack of reading books is enacted as a public health problem that requires prevention and the intervention of public healthcare. However, the problem does not have a public solution; instead, it is supposed to be solved as a private matter in private homes by parents. Reading books is connected to both individual academic success and the future good of society as a whole. The way that reading is naturalised hides the political and ideological negotiations behind the settlement of the truths about reading books. Accordingly, they cannot be disengaged from political and economic interests. The enacted values facilitate political engagement and governance, and are in many cases direct reasons for political and economic interventions (see Hamilton, 2016, p. 4).

The work of connecting reading to healthcare can be understood as constituting a kind of ‘medicalisation’ (Conrad, 1992) of reading. Reading books is enacted as the activity of a healthy child, in both the metaphors of vitamins and nourishment and in the very involvement of healthcare experts in the matter. Books are enacted as crucial not only for children in their language development and vocabulary acquisition, but also for establishing a close and caring relationship between parents and children. Moreover, reading becomes something that cannot be left to the educational system and schools, meaning parents become responsible for solving the problem of non-reading.

A specific version of good parenting is thereby enacted, involving a parent who is an already well-established reader with the means and possibilities to make the active choices called for in the brochures; a parent who enjoys reading, creates routines and who has both the time to spend on the activity and knowledge of the right books. In the long term, parents are also valuated in the number of words that their children know and their children’s academic success.

The specific and limited versions of parenting, reading and books create insecurities and anxieties concerning these matters. Parents can fail here; they can do this wrong. Experts on the matter are recruited in response to this anxiety; healthcare practitioners, librarians, brochures and reading organisations can direct parents to the reading resources valuated as suitable. The process of shaping and controlling people’s behaviour to achieve certain aims, and making this control desirable for both ‘rulers’ and ‘ruled’, can be understood in terms of governmentality (Rose, 1996). In particular, we can view the ABC brochures from BVC as links between healthcare as authority figure and parents as individuals. The way that reading books for their children is presented as reasonable and naturally desirable for parents, by enacting morality and health, is what makes parents govern themselves.

The study demonstrates how the reading habits of the white middle class become naturalised as the norm of health, morality and success for everyone. However, at the same time this reduces the influence of, or makes invisible, the political issues relating to children’s differing opportunities for managing and succeeding in school. As shown above, the exclusion of school from the production of reading as a matter of health reinforces the idea that this is an issue of individual choice, while obscuring issues of social class, poverty, equal access to the Swedish language, allocation of resources, equality and integration and the sense of belonging to society.

Valuation studies provide a particularly effective approach to explore the interwoven and overlapping practices in which worth and values are created and stabilised (Dussauge et al., 2015; Helgesson, 2016), since such instances order social life and coordinate social action (Hamilton, 2012). Lamont (2012) calls on researchers to explore specifically the way that this social ordering sustains hierarchies and defines members of society as more or less valuable. By not doing so, there is a risk of overlooking the instances where attempts to make more people valuable have the opposite effect, where one group of people is defined as the norm while others are identified as less successful, less moral, and less valuable.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Ninni Wahlström and Johan Öhman and the research colleagues in SMED both in Örebro and Uppsala, for careful readings and thoughtful comments. I also especially want to thank Hedvig Gröndal, Hanna Hofverberg, Lina Rahm, Ásgeir Tryggvason and Emma Vikström. I gratefully acknowledge the Discourse reviewers for their helpful and inspiring feedback on this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A new public library act further elucidates the public libraries’ mission to strengthen ‘the position of literature and the interest in Bildung, enlightenment, education, research and cultural activities’ (Swedish Arts Council, 2015, p. 3, my translation).

2. http://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country/note/Sweden.pdf

3. http://www.kulturradet.se/sv/Lasframjande/Bokstart-gammal/; http://www.kulturradet.se/sv/Lasframjande/Lasambassadoren/; http://www.kulturradet.se/sv/Lasframjande/Idrott/

4. National guidelines for children’s healthcare (http://www.rikshandboken-bhv.se/Kategori/Barnhälsovårdsprogrammet)

5. Personal communication with nurses at two Swedish BVC clinics, August 18, 2017 and October 5, 2017.

6. I translated the quotes from both the ABC brochures and the Parents’ Handbook.

7. See endnote 4.

8. This can be downloaded in Swedish (https://www.aktivskola.org/kunskapsbanken/#/Hälsa).

9. I was unable to trace the cited research.

10. However, it was possible to trace the same idea about reading to studies conducted in the 1980s (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2001), where unusual words were counted in different media and ways of communication. The studies indicated there were more unusual words in children’s books than in normal adult talk and other media, for example, TV talk.

11. On pedagogisation, see Depaepe, Herman, Surmont, Van Gorp, & Simon, 2008.

12. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-for-development/

13. Some examples of different videos showing versions of these quantifications are as follows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KCVXdyjQXU; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1nzc9P5MSA&t=44s; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wud_Qv22dFs&t=257s; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSULIvTNKOE&t=10s; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp4_nEw2RQI

14. Around 35% of the parents stated that they read to their children every day. However, and this is not mentioned in the Parents’ Handbook, another 30% reported doing the activity several times a week. Additionally, the 2012 survey (a private initiative) was web based, while the 2003 survey (a government initiative) was conducted through phone interviews, making them hard to compare.