A feel for books: A Bourdieusian approach on embodied reading promotion practices for babies

Abstract

This article offers a Bourdieusian analysis of reading promotion practices aimed at babies. Drawing on ethnographic work, it explores how embodied interactions with books, spatial regulations, and ideals of motherhood intersect in these practices. Using the concepts of habitus and cultural capital, the study reveals how classed norms are inscribed in everyday engagements with books. By focusing on adult interpretations of babies’ book-related behavior, the study highlights how symbolic distinctions are drawn even in the earliest stages of life, and how these distinctions are tied to broader structures of class and cultural legitimacy.

Introduction

In recent decades, babies have gained a central position in the reading market. Libraries across Europe and North America invite parents with their babies to song and storytime sessions (Molin, 2010; Sirinides et al., 2017), library spaces are being redesigned to accommodate the youngest visitors (Black and Rankin, 2012; Knoll, 2016; Marino, 2003), and reading campaigns increasingly emphasise the importance of establishing shared reading routines from an early age. Notably, the notion of “early” is extended to include the prenatal period, as exemplified by one campaign website which states: “we always say it is never too soon to start reading to your baby, and this includes sharing a story to your bump!” (Words for Life, n.d).

These initiatives reflect a broader institutional effort to foster reading habits from early life. In countries such as Sweden, the UK, and the USA, libraries sometimes visit families with newborns to introduce books and reading aloud (Adenfelt et al., 2021). In Sweden, such visits mainly target socioeconomically disadvantaged areas (Rånlund et al., 2020), making the classed dimensions of non-reading explicit. Research has long shown a strong correlation between early exposure to books and later reading habits (Elkin, 2014). This assumption is evident in policy documents; for example, a Swedish government inquiry from 1997 measured children’s “contact with books” during a day at home, based on the premise that such contact is foundational for literacy development (Leijon, 1997: p. 39). The study also demonstrated a clear link between parents’ educational level and children’s book contact, reinforcing the connection between cultural capital and early reading environments. ¹

Reading initiatives for babies have developed within a broader climate of concern about literacy, particularly since the early 2000s. In Sweden, this concern has been reinforced by recurring reports of declining reading comprehension among young people, often highlighted in national and international assessments such as PISA. While these assessments are presented as objective, they are deeply entangled with political agendas and ideas of national competitiveness. At the same time, critical literacy research challenges the notion of reading as neutral or universally beneficial. Scholars have shown that literacy practices are embedded in cultural norms and assumptions about success – socially, academically, and emotionally (Sundström Sjödin and Rahm, 2025). Historian Graff, 1979 questioned the myth of literacy as a straightforward path to progress, and later scholars such as Hamilton (2012) and Lindsköld et al. (2020) have demonstrated how dominant discourses shape what counts as ‘proper’ reading and how readers are evaluated differently across contexts.

These critical perspectives on literacy have contributed to a growing body of research that challenges the presumed neutrality and universality of reading as a cultural practice. Rather than constituting a straightforward path to empowerment or success, literacy must be understood as a socially embedded phenomenon, shaped by historically contingent norms and institutional frameworks. Accordingly, sociological research has further demonstrated how reading and book-related activities are structured by middle-class cultural values and expectations. Middle-class norms for early literacy-oriented parenting involve deliberately planned language development, organized activities, and intensive parental engagement — all aimed at building cultural capital from infancy. These ideas have been criticized for reproducing class inequalities, as the home environments of low-income and working-class families are often undervalued despite their legitimate literacy and caregiving practices (see e.g., Ellingsæter et al., 2022; McCarthey, 1997; Vincent and Ball, 2007).

Contemporary research rarely examines how early literacy initiatives for babies, organized by public or non-profit actors, reproduce social hierarchies linked to class and cultural capital. While Hedemark and Lindberg (2018) have insightfully studied baby reading sessions in libraries, their work focuses on the librarian’s role and didactic aspects instead of these social dimensions. Other studies have addressed bodily regulation in relation to books, though typically among older children, emphasizing normative movement rules rather than socio-economic dimensions. For instance, Cochran-Smith (1984) documented bodily discipline during preschool storytime, and Simonsson (2004) identified similar practices in Swedish preschools. While embodied interaction with books is recognized as significant and systematically cultivated in early childhood settings, its role in reproducing class-based distinctions remains largely unexplored.

This study analyses a rich body of material — including observations of baby-oriented literacy promotion activities in libraries, interviews with librarians and literacy advocates, negotiations around reading aloud and motherhood on online parenting forums, and various texts with literacy-promoting ambitions — through a Bourdieusian lens, focusing primarily on habitus and cultural capital. Given the interpretative ambiguity surrounding key concepts in this field, the terms “reading” and “literacy” are used interchangeably here. Babies’ book interactions are sometimes framed as reading, other times as literacy, reflecting discourses where physical exploration of objects is understood as literacy (Hackett and Somerville, 2017; Mackey, 2016), while babies’ engagement with books is occasionally conceptualized as reading – assuming a notion that includes not only text decoding but also visual grammar for interpreting images in early concept books (Beveridge, 2017; Österlund and Lassén-Seger, 2023).

The study thus explores how early literacy initiatives for young children portray certain forms of reading and book-related habitus as desirable, while others are marginalized, and how these practices may reproduce social hierarchies linked to class and cultural capital. The empirical material was previously analysed through an actor-network theory (ANT) lens and published as a monograph (Andersson, 2025). Since that analysis did not fully capture class-reproducing elements observed during fieldwork, this article applies a Bourdieusian perspective to foreground these practices as class-normative. This approach reveals that even micro-level interactions – such as a baby’s tactile engagement with a book – are embedded within class norms.

Baby habitus and cultural capital

Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and cultural capital capture the essential aspects of embodied class structures as they are expressed in individual gestures and bodily comportment. This is elaborated on in a text published in the anthology Bourdieu (1998), where Bourdieu writes about habitus as having a “feel for the game”: “like a good tennis player, one positions oneself not where the ball is but where it will be; one invests oneself and one invests not where the profit is, but where it will be” (p. 79). In the same way, cultural capital reflects access to, and familiarity with, in the case of this study, books and shared reading practices. Cultural capital is thus something acquired early, within the family and the educational system, and used to position oneself socially. It differs from Bourdieu’s other forms of capital; it is a form of capital that emphasizes cultivation and cultural refinement (Broady, 1998).

Analysing the habitus and cultural capital of babies is not without its challenges. This approach is debated even in studies of older children and youth, although it has been employed by many prominent childhood researchers. In an article published in Childhood, sociologist Camille Salgues (2018) critically examines how childhood studies have traditionally approached children’s agency through the lens of structural theory. Drawing on examples from the anthology Childhood with Bourdieu (Alanen et al., 2015), he argues that attempts to apply Bourdieusian concepts – such as habitus – within a framework that presumes a contrast between micro- and macro-levels risk misrepresenting the theoretical foundations of Bourdieu’s sociology. Salgues specifically questions the compatibility between Bourdieusian theory and the dominant tendency in childhood studies to locate and affirm children’s agency, suggesting that such efforts may inadvertently reproduce the very dualisms that Bourdieu sought to overcome. In Bourdieu’s theory, no such opposition between structure and agency exists; rather, the individual is understood as a bearer of social structures, which are embodied and enacted through practice. While these studies often aim to foreground children’s agency and social positioning, they may, according to Salgues, risk treating “the child” as a stable and pre-existing category. This, he argues, can obscure the more generative potential of Bourdieu’s sociology – not as a tool for explaining children’s experiences per se, but as a framework for interrogating how the very category of “the child” is socially produced and maintained within specific institutional and discursive contexts.

In this study, the babies’ book habitus is not examined in itself, but rather through the ways in which adults interpret babies’ embodied engagements with books as either appropriate or lacking. These interpretations are not neutral; they are shaped by culturally specific expectations about what reading should look like, and by implicit norms regarding developmental progress and parental involvement. As such, they risk reinforcing classed distinctions, where certain reading behaviours are recognised and valued, while others are rendered invisible or inadequate. Biting the book, throwing it away, or ignoring it altogether are, for instance, interpreted by adult informants as signs of both emerging literacy and unfamiliarity with books, and are thus analysed here as constructions of a cultural and classed boundary. In this study, baby habitus is therefore understood as (i) a bodily situated and relationally shaped disposition, where cultural capital is not something the child possesses, but something that is mediated, enacted, and invested through adult practices; and (ii) an ongoing interpretation of babies’ book interactions as either proficient or insufficient, based on assumptions about reading habits in the home.

Materials and methods

The empirical material in this study was collected during fieldwork in which several different sites of baby reading promotion activities were studied. The material thus consists of observations of reading promotion information sessions at city and local libraries (B1–B4) for new parents and their babies (n = 6), group interviews with library staff, library interior designers, reading promoters, and parents (n = 4); threads from online forums where parents have discussed shared reading routines for young children (n = 9); as well as various textual materials primarily gathered during fieldwork – such as brochures, manuals, and reading campaign materials. The material was collected with the aim of gaining an overview of the baby reading promotion field, and the selection is based on achieving such an overview. I initiated the fieldwork by engaging in conversations with various reading promotion professionals, which in turn led me to both relevant sites and written materials. Simultaneously, I contacted public libraries in the counties of Västra Götaland and Halland in Sweden to inquire about the possibility of attending informational sessions for new parents. The selection was not strategic; rather, I participated in all sessions I was granted access to among those libraries that offered such events. Despite being spread across two different regions, the sessions were remarkably similar in structure and content, which led to a relatively early sense of saturation in the observational material. During these observations, I encountered both parents and librarians, whom I later interviewed. The exploration of the field took place over a total period of 6 months (spring 2022 and spring 2023). During this time, I also had many informal conversations with individuals engaged in baby reading promotion, both in municipal and voluntary contexts. One of these conversation partners functioned as a kind of gatekeeper in the field of baby reading promotion; the conversations with this person paved the way for interviews with key actors as well as access to textual material that was internal to specific reading promoters.

This method – engaging with a multiplicity of settings and sources – can be described as multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995), an approach in which several physical or non-physical sites are studied. Marcus emphasizes how traditional ethnographic work, focused on a single place, is challenged in contemporary times as dichotomies such as local/global become less productive. In multi-sited ethnography, the researcher instead follows a phenomenon across multiple sites, tracing connections and relationships between actors and institutions, and mapping processes rather than places; that is, how ideas or forms of capital circulate within a field.

Adopting this perspective is particularly relevant here because, although the study is situated within a Swedish context, baby reading promotion is not unique to Sweden. Similar initiatives exist and are expanding globally. The Swedish case can therefore be understood as one situated example of a broader, transnational trend in early childhood literacy promotion. As such, the findings may contribute to a wider understanding of how reading practices, parental engagement, and cultural capital are shaped and mobilized across different sociocultural contexts.

Ethical considerations

Researchers studying babies in library environments have highlighted several practical obstacles to systematic observation. McKechnie (2006) highlights that library storytimes are complex and noisy, making it hard to capture everything, and recommends multiple audio recorders and repeated visits. In my observations, I used one recorder, which was sufficient given the small groups (about 5–10 parents and 3–6 babies). Although crying sometimes drowned out conversation, this did not affect the analysis – such interruptions were instead considered part of the empirical material.

Further, fieldwork involving babies naturally entails several ethical challenges. For example, babies cannot provide informed consent to participate in research. During the fieldwork, the babies’ legal guardians gave their consent for both themselves and their babies to participate in the project. Since baby reading promotion is not a sensitive topic, and since the project did not aim to collect material containing sensitive personal data (according to GDPR), it was considered sufficient that the babies’ guardians approved their participation. All participants involved in observations and interviews provided their informed consent. All participants, locations, and libraries have also been pseudonymized.

The project underwent ethical review at two stages. An initial application to the Swedish Ethical Review Authority for observations and interviews was waived, as the authority deemed no review necessary (Ref. No. 2022-05326-01). This decision was confirmed on appeal (Case No. Ö 67-2022/3.1). Later, when including material from internet forums, a new application was submitted and approved (Ref. No. 2023-05190-01).

My own role during the fieldwork was to participate on the same terms as the other participants. During the observations, I sat among the parents and babies, recording and taking notes, but I also occasionally joined in the songs that were sung. I interacted with the babies who showed interest in me or my technological tools (that is, the recorder, pen, and notebook), and I sometimes responded to questions about language comprehension and baby reading from librarians and parents – questions I was often unable to fully answer, as this is not my area of expertise. However, my partially active participation did not affect the analytical work – I was careful not to comment on the babies’ book interactions and similar matters, in order not to promote a discourse in the room that might otherwise not have been as prominent.

My role on the internet forums was to take a passive stance. There has for some time been a discussion among researchers conducting so-called ‘netnography’ – ethnography online – about the researcher’s visibility on internet forums. The forum threads examined in this study had all been inactive for a long period and are best defined as archival material. By not examining or participating in active forum threads, I was able to avoid influencing the conversation on the forum. One ethical concern, however, is that it may be perceived as a violation of privacy by forum users if they later learn that a researcher was present on the site (Kozinets, 2010), especially if their statements were used in the analysis. To avoid such outcomes, excerpts have been partially modified in terms of certain word choices that do not affect the content of what was written. In this article, they have also been translated from Swedish to English. These measures reduce the risk of the threads being searchable and the participants’ aliases being revealed.

Method of analysis

I have repeatedly used the term ‘field’ in the methodological discussion. Here, field should not be understood in Bourdieu’s sense of a social space. In line with Salgues (2018), I regard a field in Bourdieu’s sense as a historically established and relatively autonomous social space in which actors compete for capital and legitimacy. Although baby reading promotion displays certain field-like characteristics, such as an actor structure and symbolic resources, it lacks the historical weight and autonomy required to be defined as a Bourdieusian field. I therefore use the term field in a more pragmatic and descriptive sense, rather than as a strict theoretical framework. However, Bourdieu’s understanding of the inherent properties of a field is used here methodologically: it organizes the material into specific categories and directs attention to certain analytical aspects that are important in Bourdieusian analysis. Accordingly, the analysis has been categorized based on the following themes with associated research questions, which, as mentioned, follow the properties that a field upholds.

Practices and actors: How is a desirable habitus practiced in the everyday interactions of baby reading promotion, and which actors – with which positions and forms of capital – are granted interpretive authority in defining what counts as desirable or undesirable book interactions?

Cultural and institutional context: What kind of habitus appears as desirable in the cultural and institutional contexts where baby reading promotion is practiced, and how are these expectations reproduced through professional norms and material arrangements?

Cultural capital: How do different forms of cultural capital – such as familiarity with books, pedagogical knowledge, or parenting ideologies – function as distinguishing and boundary-drawing in the construction of a desirable habitus within baby reading promotion?

The following analysis is structured around three cases, each of which emerges from the dynamic interplay between the empirical material and the theoretical concepts outlined above. Each case serves as an entry point into examining how cultural capital and habitus are mobilized and negotiated within the situated contexts of reading promotion for babies.

Embodied engagements and the boundary work of book practices

Information sessions for new parents at libraries often balance practical advice with reassurance about babies’ interaction with books. While these sessions were structured in roughly the same way – covering language development, book recommendations and practical tips about borrowing or visiting the library – the content might have seemed redundant to experienced library visitors. For participating parents, however, much of it was new. This may explain why librarians emphasized that it is perfectly acceptable for babies to bite or suck on borrowed books: “they’re discovering the world with their mouths,” as one librarian noted during a session at Library B3. Similarly, at Library B2, a librarian reassured parents: “we replace [the books] regularly, so the ones at the library you’re very welcome to borrow, and if they end up in the mouth, that’s totally fine.”

The librarians’ reasoning here rests on two intertwined ideas: that the child’s sensory exploration of books is natural, and that the book itself is a durable, replaceable object. Across both observations and interviews, this image of the children’s book as expendable was repeatedly reinforced, carefully stripping it of any aura of literary sanctity. In effect, books were framed less as cultural treasures and more as practical tools for developmental play – a stance that reflects a socioeconomic ideal where families are expected to afford treating books as consumable resources. This expectation was further evident in how books were discussed as items to be scattered across everyday spaces: “And just bringing books along, borrowing books here, putting them in the diaper bag and the stroller and having them in the car, spreading books around, so you can read anytime” (information session at B2).

In interviews with librarians and reading promoters, it was repeatedly mentioned that some parents (for example, people from other cultures or with lower levels of education) are unfamiliar with this uncareful handling of books. In one interview, a library staff member spoke about how, in the Bookstart program, they visit families in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, and that these families often react with surprise to the encouragement of the baby’s book-chewing:

And then the child just takes the book they’re given and puts it straight in their mouth, you know. And the parents are often like, “no no, you can’t ruin the nice present,” you know. But that’s part of this inclusive and unpretentious approach too, like, yeah, “go ahead and taste it” [laughs]. I think I’ve mentioned it before, that we’d rather get books back that look used than ones that haven’t been touched, you know. (interview with library staff)

During the same interview, the staff member suggested that awareness of what counts as “appropriate” engagement with books is shaped by where families live in the city, and that library activities might need adaptation depending on location:

I mean, if you look at the demographics of those who live in the [high income] city centre, there are quite a few with higher education and so on, you know. So it feels like the parents we get are very aware. So maybe we would need to have a different… well, not different content, but still adapted content, if we were located more in the [low-income] suburbs, for example. Or in the countryside. (interview with library staff)

The practice of book-biting could be read as carrying a certain ambivalence: while librarians promote an inclusive, unpretentious approach that normalizes this behavior, they also operate within discourses that elevate book reading as essential and participate in gift-giving practices that frame books as special objects. In this sense, the habitus associated with book familiarity is articulated as one where the baby is allowed – even expected – to bite and chew on the book; preventing this might signal a lack of cultural capital. The baby’s habitus emerges through this bodily engagement, while cultural capital is expressed in the parent’s response to it. At the same time, the observation above illustrates how institutional practices negotiate these tensions, adapting to the varying habitus of families – particularly in contexts where access to dominant cultural forms may be less prevalent – while still reinforcing the idea that reading is indispensable. This interplay underscores the persistent ambivalence between treating books as everyday, consumable objects and as carriers of cultural value.

During the fieldwork, this tension became visible in how babies’ book-biting was interpreted sometimes as sensory exploration and early literacy, and sometimes as inappropriate handling. For example, in a manual aimed at professionals working with the Bookstart programme, book-chewing is described as a matter of unfamiliarity, but still as something that should be encouraged:

Giving one of the books to the child may sometimes be met with surprise. Many have not considered that books are for children this young. If the child is six months old, they can usually grasp the book. If they are not familiar with books, they will likely take the book to their mouth to taste it. It is important to convey to both children and parents that this is something right and good. (Widerberg, 2018, p. 23: translated from Swedish)

Here, book-chewing is thus expressed as something that exists on the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable book-related habitus. The assumption in the manual seems to be that a book-familiar child has, by the age of 6 months, outgrown chewing on books and instead begun to use them in a more appropriate way. This boundary work (Gieryn, 1983) around book-chewing thus reveals how early reading practices become a site for reproduction of cultural norms, where even the baby’s bodily engagement with the book is subject to implicit expectations shaped by dominant forms of cultural capital – expectations that also presume a certain ease in treating books as everyday objects.

Hence, despite the repeated downplaying of the status of books in interactions with parents, boundaries are still revealed, as in the Bookstart manual. These boundaries are based on what is considered acceptable book handling for a baby and are also visible in the reasoning about other unconventional reading (or listening) behaviours. While a librarian at one moment stated that “even wandering children are listening,” it is also encouraged that the parent shows the child a more ‘correct’ reading behaviour. At another library information session, a librarian explained that even though the child seems to not listen, the adult should at least “keep reading and show that you yourself are interested in sitting and reading” (information session at B2):

If we’re sitting with a phone, we’re not very interesting, but if we’re sitting with a book and show that we’re reading – books that are for me – then the child will of course follow and see that “okay, we’re a reading family here, so I’ll read too.” (information session at B2)

The above reasoning was used by several library staff members during several information sessions and interviews: the more you read yourself, the more your child will want to read. It is thus presented as a habit acquired in homes where reading is common, where the importance of allowing children to explore books physically is understood. At the same time, the book is portrayed as one of the most important tools for language development and later social and academic success; it therefore constantly teeters on the boundary between being idealized and being trivialized.

Spatial regulations of movement

The constant downplaying of the book’s status that librarians engage in when meeting parents is thus a way to allow parents who lack the “right” book-related habits to let their children approach books without fear of damaging or destroying them. This is argued to be an inclusive strategy, but in a way, it is also a strategy that reinforces a distinction between those with and without book-related experience; between those with the ‘right’ book habitus and those without. The developmental threshold for when a child is no longer expected to put books in their mouth is also only implicitly articulated.

While the baby’s handling of the book thus reveals the family’s cultural capital, the baby’s presence among books can do the same. In the children’s library room, where the books are located, the interior design is carefully planned to promote certain movements and activities – and, of course, to limit others. In an interview with two children’s library interior designers, they stated that: “A little baby should be able to crawl and get a book on their own. Whichever one they see. And just grab it without needing an adult to help them find a book, you know” (interview with designers). Here, the designers emphasize the child-centred perspective that guides the furnishing of children’s libraries today. They are designed to increase baby autonomy and thereby to encourage book interactions initiated by the babies themselves. At the same time, several design choices are made to create an environment that invites stillness and reading: the soft carpet and the low book bins are some of them, but also sound-absorbing floors and textiles:

I also feel that the softness, like the wall-to-wall carpet and all that, it kind of signals that you’re supposed to get down on your knees, almost. Like, you’re meant to be on the floor. It becomes quite natural not to… run around. Of course the children do that, but still, there’s this sense that you’re meant to be down on the floor, you know. (interview with designer)

The types of movements that the designers attempt to “design away” are the exuberant ones: running, jumping, and high noise levels. The designers recount how some of the furniture they had included was later removed by library staff because it caused disorder – for example, “when they built forts out of the cushions, that’s when the librarian drew the line.”

When it comes to the very youngest children, the promotion of book interaction (initiated by the baby) also becomes problematic at times. The designers pointed out that “you want the books to be at the children’s height, but they’re also the ones who make the biggest mess”:

Because they don’t just take one book at a time – they pull everything off the shelf, you know. So that’s usually where the most hands-on work is needed, like cleaning up and so on. I remember once they removed all the board books because it was too much trouble having them at that height. And then you must be like, “well, we can’t really do that either.” That just doesn’t work. (interview with designer)

The specific habitus that is shaped and encouraged in the children’s library room is thus one in which the baby turns toward the books and interacts with them on their own initiative. The habitus that is restricted is that of exuberant play, including with books – for example, when babies pull down all the books from the low shelves. These movement patterns are also curtailed through the regulation of parental behavior: in several of the children’s libraries I visited during fieldwork, signs were posted with messages such as “please tidy up after your child.”

At the same time, there is also a degree of tolerance for uses of the children’s library that contradict its intended purpose. The shaping of the children’s library as the “living room of the city” – a safe space for families and residents – also involves a recognition that for some children – those from homes with low cultural capital – the library space may function as an extension of their home; a space where they are afforded the room they may lack at home:

We’ve talked a lot about how, when slightly older children come in, many of them don’t have a place to do their homework. In a lot of the [low-income] suburbs, families live in quite cramped conditions, and when they get home, it’s not calm or quiet – there’s really no space to study. And then I’ve thought, well, it’s all the children in that family – it’s crowded – and I know that often in libraries you see older siblings coming in with their younger siblings. It’s not always a parent; sometimes it’s a whole group of siblings that comes. And that’s when I really feel that the library becomes like a second living room for them. It’s the space they might not always have at home. (interview with designer)

The quote reflects an underlying assumption that the library can offer a sense of stillness that is not available in all homes, and that children from such homes actively seek out this stillness. Even though these children may not possess the “right” habitus for the particular space – they tend to sit and do homework rather than interact with books – their use of the children’s library room as a “second living room” is nonetheless seen as supporting other aspects of the capital they are in the process of building, in the absence of what is presumed to be a capital-poor home environment.

Ideal motherhood and reading promotion

The assumption that children from culturally capital-poor homes use the children’s library to meet needs that are not fulfilled at home tends to produce a distinction between certain children from certain families and the book-familiar children from book-familiar families. The movements of the book-familiar children within the library are smooth and frictionless; the library is designed around their patterns of movement and their “natural” ways of navigating the space. They settle onto the carpets, pick up books, flip through them. They do not use the children’s library room to satisfy a need – for example, to create space for completing mandatory schoolwork – but rather to cultivate themselves, beyond the scholastic.

In both that we might call the book-chewing practice and the spatial movement habitus, ideas recur about certain families’ relationships to cultural, or specifically literary, activities and objects. The assumption that the family background is important for babies’ book-related habitus permeates the entire field. This tends to have emotional implications, especially for those parents who struggle to establish reading routines with their babies. In a theoretical elaboration from 2000, sociologist Reay argues that the concept of emotional capital can be used as a fruitful extension of Bourdieu’s other forms of capital. Reay argues that emotional capital plays a central role in how mothers engage in their children’s education. The emotional labour invested by mothers is not only extensive, but also gendered and classed: the emotional work a middle-class mother devotes to her child’s schooling is more likely to be converted into cultural or symbolic capital – something that is not always the case for mothers with limited cultural or economic capital.

These emotional investments are not only shaped by structural conditions, but also become visible in everyday parenting practices, including how reading routines are discussed and negotiated in digital spaces. Assumptions about book familiarity (and its importance) motivate parents to read aloud to even the youngest children, as seen in online forums where reading routines are discussed. In most cases, this appears to be an affirming activity for the mothers who describe their routines, where their young children are portrayed as both book-familiar and linguistically resourceful. Describing one’s child as someone who “loves books” and who independently brings books and places them in the mother’s lap is presented as ideal – these narratives tend to receive praise and approval. It is more difficult for those mothers who, despite repeated efforts, do not manage to establish reading routines at home. In an internet forum for parents, one conversation between the original poster and a mother unfolded as follows:

Original post:

You who don’t read to your children?

I feel like I see in many threads about bedtime that there are quite a few people who don’t read to their kids at night? Do you read at other times? Or not at all? If not – why?

I’m just curious, since we know that reading is good for children’s language development.

Commenter #1:

Honestly, I very rarely read to the kids. You could count the times on one hand. But if you look at my oldest daughter, who’s now in school – she’s way smarter than her friends when it comes to writing, reading, and language… All three of my kids started talking early as well… so, well, I guess talking to them works just as well as reading?

Original poster to commenter #1:

Can I ask why you don’t read? I’m just curious

Original poster to commenter #1:

How do you know she’s smarter than her peers?

Commenter #1:

Because it’s just so boring…

Original poster to commenter #1:

OK, do your kids think it’s boring too? Some kids seem to enjoy it more than others. Both of mine – 2 and 4 years old – love reading books.

Even though the original poster is careful not to sound judgmental, the thread revolves around her and other mothers describing their quantitatively and qualitatively rich reading routines, which makes commenter #1 appear as an outlier. The original poster also wonders whether this mother’s own feelings about reading may have affected her children’s interest in books, when she asks whether the children “think it’s boring too.”

In another thread, where the original poster began with the question “How often do you read to your children (ages 0–6)?”, one mother writes:

Ugh, it’s so hard to read all these comments saying how important it is to start reading from like 3–4 months. Can someone please cheer me up and tell me it’s not too late just because I haven’t managed it yet at 8 months? Or do you have any tips for what to do when she just wants to grab the book and chew on it? I’ve tried giving her her own book to hold, but of course mine is way more interesting. And if I sit a bit farther away, we can’t really look at the pictures together.

Here, too, a book-familiar child is constructed as one who does not chew on the book. The “good” parenting practices articulated in relation to book familiarity and reading routines on online forums tend to generate feelings of inadequacy among mothers whose children show little interest. Similar posts appear from several mothers across different threads. This becomes especially clear in a thread where the original poster asks for help:

How on earth do you manage to read to your children?

I have a son who is now 2.5 years old and delayed in his speech. I’ve tried reading to him from the very beginning, but he’s never been interested in listening to stories—he just grabs the book out of my hands, tears the pages, and chews on them. So how do you who can read to your kids do it? I can’t get him to sit still and listen for more than a few seconds, which feels disheartening. I’m a total bookworm myself and, ironically, I work as a librarian, so this honestly feels pretty bad. :/

This original poster receives a range of responses, most of which assume that there are strategies she has not yet tried:

Commenter #4:

How often and how much are you outdoors? He sounds mentally overstimulated and physically under-activated. My twins were wild, so we were out at playgrounds and in the woods all year round, in all kinds of weather. Then they would listen to stories at bedtime when they were tired. It’s also important to start with short sessions and simple books. Listening requires concentration and practice.

Commenter #2:

Given that you’re a librarian, maybe you’re being too ambitious and too pedagogical in how you think about reading aloud and books?

In these forums, reading aloud is not only framed as a pedagogical activity – it also functions as a symbolic act that signals “good” parenting practice. This can be interpreted as a form of cultural capital: reading aloud, having a child who actively chooses books and reading moments, and having a so-called book-familiar child – one who knows how books are to be handled:

My daughter is twenty-one months old, has a well-developed vocabulary (up to a thousand words in three languages, speaks in full sentences, conjugates verbs correctly, etc.) and loves books. She’s never been interested in destroying them (I also make sure she learns to respect books – if she starts to damage them, I take them away, and she gets the message). It doesn’t necessarily have to do with the early, consistent reading, but it certainly hasn’t hurt. (Post #21, forum thread 5)

What emerges, then, is a moral economy of parenting in which book-related behaviours – both the child’s and the parent’s – are imbued with symbolic value, reinforcing classed ideals of competence, care and cultural legitimacy.

A feel for books: Concluding discussion on literary habitus and classed dispositions

It would not be accurate to assume that all mothers who reported well-established reading routines on the online forums were middle class. However, it is reasonable to assume that all participants in the threads examined are, in one way or another, influenced by – or compelled to relate to – middle-class norms surrounding parenting and shared reading. These middle-class norms are reproduced in all three cases analysed in this study: in the rhetoric surrounding babies’ book familiarity and how it is expressed bodily in the babies’ book habitus (to chew or not to chew on books); in the movements that are encouraged or shaped within the children’s library space; and in the advice and encouragement parents encounter in online forums about reading routines. All three cases can thus be linked to ideas suggesting that certain forms of book habitus signal parental competence and pedagogical skill – and, by extension, cultural capital. In the vagueness surrounding the book-chewing practice – what constitutes acceptable versus unacceptable oral book exploration – a distinction is drawn between those who “know” and those who do not; those with the “right” book sense understand where the boundaries lie. The notion of a “feel for books,” akin to Bourdieu’s concept of a “feel for the game,” emerges as a form of embodied cultural capital that is both inherited and socially recognized. This feel is not only about knowing how to handle books “properly,” but also about intuitively navigating the symbolic boundaries of acceptable literary behavior – boundaries that are often invisible to those who do not already possess the right habitus.

Who, then, are the actors with the authority to interpret what constitutes a good book habitus? In the cases presented here, it is quite clear that it is primarily the reading-promotion professionals who provide these interpretations, and thereby distinctions. That mothers then reproduce these interpretations – sometimes with reservations, such as not accepting book-chewing as a literary activity – is here understood as a reproduction of a cultural and partly academic, or educated, approach to reading; one that they might have encountered through child health centres (which in the Swedish context also promote reading) and national reading campaigns. However, not all mothers align with these interpretations. In several online forums, some explicitly resist the normative expectations of reading-promotion practices by choosing not to read to their children. This resistance can be understood as a counter-position to the dominant cultural and educated approach to reading, challenging the assumption that early book engagement is universally desirable.

In the study, I have primarily interpreted babies’ book habitus through the lens of adult interpretations. By focusing on adult interpretations of babies’ book-related behavior, the study has highlighted how symbolic distinctions are drawn even in the earliest stages of life, and how these distinctions are tied to broader structures of class and cultural legitimacy. The analysis also underscores the emotional stakes involved in parenting under the gaze of institutional and peer expectations, where failure to meet implicit norms can generate feelings of inadequacy and exclusion.

Previous research on reading-promotion practices targeting babies or young preschool children has primarily focused on mapping didactic methods, and some has examined bodily regulation in the presence of books. Both building on and diverging from this earlier work, my previous analysis of the empirical material presented in this article, which was published in book form (Andersson, 2025), approached these practices through an actor-network theory lens. That perspective illuminated the material and relational configurations of reading-promotion activities but did not fully address the class-reproducing dimensions that emerged during fieldwork. Building on this foundation, the present study applies a Bourdieusian framework to reveal how both methods and bodily regulations are saturated with classed norms. This complementary perspective makes visible the boundary work embedded in reading-promotion practices aimed at babies and their families, and the baby- and book-related habitus that is privileged in these contexts.

That said, it would be valuable to further explore how institutions interpret and respond to the embodied dispositions of very young children – what might be understood as an emergent habitus. As babies become increasingly visible actors in both practice and research, it is crucial to examine how institutional framings contribute to shaping what is recognised as cultural capital in infancy. One of the few dominant perspectives on babies remains the developmental psychological one, which has long been problematised within the sociology of childhood (Orrmalm, 2021; Prout and James, 1997). By expanding the range of perspectives through which we relate to babies, we may also begin to question the normative assumptions that underpin institutional expectations and interventions.