One of my favorite books is Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. It uses Economics to explain behavior, and at the time, it was a new and incredibly interesting way to understand the world. Chapter five is titled, “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” The content is based on a longitudinal study tracking the academic progress of more than 20,000 children from Kindergarten through the fifth grade. The simple answer was that what parents are matters more than what parents do. To illustrate this, the authors listed sixteen factors that correlated with academic progress—with only eight factors actually affecting the outcome. The one that stuck with me was that children having many books in the home was a factor for stronger academic progress than parents who read to their children. 

On the face of it, that seems just wrong. Children can’t attain knowledge from books by osmosis. But in fact, having books in the home was an indicator that parents were educated and cared a great deal about education. Of course, this is a very simplified answer, but as I thought about my own experiences, it made sense.

I grew up in a home with books. Lots and lots of books. My father was an FBI agent and we moved several times during my childhood. In each of those homes, my father bought or built a bookcase that covered one entire wall. And it was always crammed full of books. Children’s books, my father’s yearbooks, my mother’s French novels from university, Louis L’Amour Westerns shared space with Jane Austen, Alistair MacLaine thrillers cozied up to P.G. Wodehouse. There were church books, comics, biographies, non-fiction, comedies, Shakespeare, old dictionaries and atlases. 

Back in the seventies and eighties, my siblings and I didn’t have smart phones or computers, but we did have television. It drove my parents crazy to see their children sit zombified in front of that flickering light, so our TV time was often restricted. We were bored. There was nothing to do, so we would just sigh and pull out a book and read. I read anything and everything. I read tons of beautiful, wonderful, amazing literature because I couldn’t watch TV. I remember looking at my Sophomore English class syllabus and realizing I had already read every single book on the list. Not because I was super smart (please don’t ask me to do anything related to algebra) or planning for an uber intellectual life, but because I was bored. Bored but blessed to live in a home where I had a huge range of books to choose from.

When I got married, my husband and I had just enough money to buy one piece of furniture. We needed lots of things, but we chose a bookcase. A house just didn’t feel like a home unless it had a bookcase full of books. As our family grew, we read to our children. It wasn’t consistent by any means. However, we did restrict their screen time and I was delighted to see that in their boredom, they reached for easily accessible books. Which in turn led to a great love of literature and eventually their own book collections.

In short, buy a bookcase, fill it with books and watch the magic happen.

Stacy is well-read, knowledgeable, and has remarkable talents in storytelling (both spoken and written). She was pivotal in the formation of our writing group over 10 years ago. We can’t help but laugh out loud at the hilarious details Stacy shares in her narratives about adventures growing up, parenting, and traveling the world. As a humanities buff, beauty and belief are major themes in her writing, as well.

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