Early literacy, literacy, and families: a theme in three times

Abstract

This article seeks to understand how society creates expectations for families to participate in their children’s early literacy and literacy processes in three historical moments. We developed a document analysis in advertisements, printed materials, and frequency maps for the first period (end of the 19th and early 20th century). We can perceive that the expectation of using abecedários in the household comes from an inherited cultural capital regarding writing, close to the economic capital. However, popular ABCs are also present. We used data from empirical research on early literacy in the domestic space in the rural area of Minas Gerais for the second period (1950s, 1960s, and 1970s). The experiences of domestic early literacy reveal family investments, and we can identify intersections between family, social, and school literacy practices using account books, leaflets, prayers, letters, and school and literature books. In the third period (21st century), we analyze the documents of the Brazilian federal program Conta pra mim using the idea, disseminated in several studies, that nowadays, writing permeates children’s experiences from an early age due to a social process beyond school. Nonetheless, we conclude that the expectation that early literacy knowledge would be developed in the household is idealized when considering the inequality of literacy distribution and the differences in language use by underprivileged groups.