I went down a rabbit hole the other day when I googled “Is reading to your child overrated?”. As a self-certified, card-carrying lone member of the Church of the Bibliophilic, I almost keeled over at the sheer amount of results that came up. Apparently, there are a good amount of people who believe reading to your child is overrated.
What with all the TikToks, child literacy advocates, school-backed programs, etc, out there all preaching, proselytizing? the benefits of reading to your children, it seems to have created a bit of a backlash. And so I read the forums, I perused the message boards, and I soaked in several blogs all disputing the benefits of reading to your child. With even more chagrin, I noticed, too, the myriad comments agreeing with the original posters.
In a world where technology is developing so rapidly and therefore creating a more fast-moving society, reading fiction seems like it might be going the way of the dinosaurs, much like shorthand before, and soon enough, cursive handwriting. Is reading overrated? Why do some people feel this way? Does it provide the benefits studies say it does for children in this technologically-changed world?
So went the questions, rapid-fire, rat-a-tat-tat, in my book-loving mind. I didn’t always love reading, even though my mom had a decent romance collection and my aunt was big into mysteries. I would love to figure out the title to this one sci-fi/mystery anthology tome she had back in the 80’s. All’s I remember was it had some Heinlein in it and it was some of the best reads I’ve ever had.
Through fiction, I “saw” so many worlds a little city girl from California wouldn’t normally see, or probably ever see. I saw robots and bank notes with Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat when I was twelve-years-old. I saw dreary, rainy, heavily oppressive south England in Thomas Hardy’s books. I saw battlin’ orcs and dwarves in Middle Earth with JRR Tolkien. For me, to say all that was overrated? Be still my heart.
So, you see, that’s where I am coming from. However, let’s see that which is called—another point of view. Let’s give judgment a bottle of Boone’s Farm and send it on its merry way. Let’s see the answer to the question, Why? Why do some people feel so strongly against what I, and other booklovers, feel so strongly for? Because this sentiment could grow to become the majority of thought. And reading could become obsolete. For worse…or better?
Let’s see.
I don’t read and I turned out fine—anecdotal fallacy or just reality?
A knee-jerk reaction would be thinking that the folks who think reading to their younguns is overrated believe that reading in general is overrated. Even for adults.
I went through forum after forum, comment after comment and my non-scientific observation is that the folks who hold true to the “reading is overrated” ideology, are usually going off their own experiences, Reading to kids is overrated – In My Humble Opinion – Straight Dope Message Board. Most hated reading themselves and now, they’re multi-millionaires, doctors, lawyers, successful people from all walks of life. Not reading or not liking to read never held them back. And look at them now. So they don’t read to their kids.
Some didn’t read to their kids, even if they themselves love to read, and well, look at their kids now. Multi-millionaires, doctors, lawyers, you get the point. Because of what they’ve actually experienced, reading didn’t seem to hold them back.
And in this blog writer’s case, Why Reading to Babies and Toddlers is Overrated, perhaps parents should be concentrating on feeding their child’s gut properly, as much as, or even more so, their child’s brain, because one begets the other.
My take: I agree that kids, in general, can become successful in their lives without reading. I don’t think reading, per se, is mandatory for all people to be successful. I believe there are two types of situations at play here: sometimes, people will rise above the hand they’re dealt, to be successful, because it was in them to strive to be the best they can be regardless of their current situations: secondly, sometimes those same successful people, could’ve been even better had they been readers, had they been read to when younger. Rather than thinking not loving reading held them back, what about thinking that if they had read more, they would’ve been even more successful? An addition more than a subtraction, if you will.
I don’t think reading to your child should be an event that excludes all others with your child. Can we not, read a book and tell stories? Can we not give balanced, healthy food and read books to our children? Can we not go camping and read books by the campfire?
Societal Expectations—Disruptors
One of the blogs I read the author called herself and her son, disruptors, which, I would’ve thought a rather novel way to think of oneself, except, thanks to the second Knives Out movie, I’ve now linked this word to smarmy self-satisfaction.
The author of the blog didn’t seem smarmy though. She just thought society wanted her and her son to be “readers”, her reading to him and him reading all the time. She said he does read, but it wasn’t for fun, and it wasn’t fiction either, but books about dinosaurs. I bring this up because she said he didn’t seem psychologically, mentally or emotionally held back for not being read to, or having reading be a big part of his life.
Her problem was about society pushing the theory that a parent must or, wink-wink, should be reading to your kid. Or else. Or else what? Or else they’re held back. But, her kid has turned out fine so far. Their relationship is fine so far. In her point of view, society should stop looking down on her and the way she raises her own child.
My take: I don’t recall this huge societal pressure that one must read to their children when I was growing up. Hailing from both city and suburb environs, I’m sure there probably was a push, however, it didn’t matter because once I read Black Beauty, reading oozed over me like Spiderman’s symbiote in Marvel’s Secret Wars. Crown Books and the local library became my stomping grounds for the next three years until I moved to Los Angeles and Waldenbooks. Needless to say, when I had my own kids, I didn’t need society to force, coerce or even hint at bringing literacy into their lives. It was already in their DNA.
But as far as what the people posited above, I would say I understand the need to buck societal pressure. To go left just because everyone says to go right. When I had my first two kids, the hospitals were extremely persuasive about having my newborns be breastfed. R-E-L-A-X, I remember thinking when they sent nurse after nurse and passed out pamphlet after pamphlet. If I want to do it, I’ll do it. So, if they want to read to their kids, they’ll do it.
It’s boring—there are better ways to spend time
This last one kind of breaks my heart. I don’t think reading is better than say, hiking with my family in raccoon-plagued Pineywood, Texas. Or, actually maybe it is because I wouldn’t be scared of getting ravaged by a gaze of 100 raccoons. But, that’s spending time with family, which I truly value. And, the act of reading is primarily an occupation of solitary effort and time, (albeit there are the outliers of poetry and book clubs, book readings, public events, etc). These solitary efforts should be valued as well. Reading to or with your child should be the boon of both spending time with family and reading for the pleasure of it.
And here’s where the rubber meets the road. Reading isn’t for everybody. For some, it doesn’t even constitute an okay time, much less good. For many folks, it is simply boring.
With the advent of technology and the occasional visit of deflation, every kid in mainstream America now has an iPad and a pair of airpods before they’re out of grade school, practically. With the rise of YouTube and TikTok, entertainment in the fraction of a second is far more gratifying and dopamine-injecting than a book that would take hours or days to get the final payoff.
Mind you, this is coming from someone who grew up playing with this:
The publishing industry has tried to keep up. Illustrated children’s books used to be primarily for children from babies to seven-years-old, i.e. – Stan and Jan Berenstain’s The Berenstain Bears and Dan Santat’s The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend. The next set of illustrated literary attractions geared to children were primarily comic books, marketed towards mostly teens and young adults.
But, beginning in the late 90’s doesn’t it seem like a new genre came up out of nowhere? Middle-grade chapter books went from prose-driven works like Ramona the Pest, Encyclopedia Brown and Junie B. Jones to primarily illustrated chapter books like the Captain Underpants and Dog Man series.
And after writing that sentence, I feel like the former books were geared to young girls and the latter towards young boys. Perhaps there’s a method to the madness? From my own experiences, anecdotal and unresearched as they be, the male side of the equation is usually visually stimulated.
Does the gearing towards illustrations take away from the ‘reading’ experience so much that they aren’t as avid about reading as their female counterparts? This infographic from Penguin Random House Trends in Consumer Book Buying [Infographic] | News for Authors shows that basically, 60% of book buyers are women, leaving the men as 40% of book buyers.
My take: Technology is coming no matter what. So I’ve embraced what it can do for my reading enthusiasm. I had a Kindle, Nook and now on my second Kobo. They’re great for my aging eyes, for reading in the dark, for reading in bed without having to switch sides, and for my shoulders for being able to carry hundreds of books at under one pound of weight and convenience.
That people, including me, tend to spend more of their time doomscrolling is a thing. I don’t think anything will change that instant gratification and dopamine injection.
I’m a sucker for doomscrolling. But what I’ve found is that my YouTube screen time is inversely related to my reading time. And when I read, I feel a lot more energized, a lot more mentally-hyped. That other folks don’t feel this way dismays me, but of course we are all different and can’t like the same things.
So, for this last take, there perhaps is no fix. All we can do is wait for our favorite authors to keep pumping out good content, Annie Wilkes’ style.
Conclusion
People don’t like reading as much anymore. There’s a backlash to reading in general that’s leading to a hesitation to promote reading to one’s own children.
Whether it’s rebelling against societal pressures, one’s own disinterest, or better opportunities created by a more fast-moving, technological world, reading is losing its place in families’ To-Do Lists.
I don’t know if there’s a way to change the flow of those thought processes. And when I truly think about it, perhaps it isn’t in my purview to try to do so.
Perhaps I must remind myself that time is eternal. But we, humans, are not. In the end, we have to decide how to spend our time and anything we choose is an option.
Perhaps instead of thinking of the ones that got away, we should focus on the ones who want to stay, who want to read, who love to read.
And keep trying for those who have yet to know the joys of reading.
“If you build it, he will come.” – W.P. Kinsella via Shoeless Joe