Focusing on family interaction, this book discusses a study designed to develop systematic ways of looking at reading and writing as activities that have consequences in and are affected by family life. Topics of the seven chapters are as follows: the six families involved in the research, conservation and change in the transmission of family literacy styles and values, family literacy and the social organization of everyday life, relationships between family literacy and children's emerging awareness of written language, family literacy in a cultural context, family literacy and learning in school, and fieldwork approaches to the study of literacy and the family. Illustrations are included. (EL)