4 ways parents can build strong reading culture at home

Indian parents love underdog stories. So, the autorickshaw wallah’s son who becomes an IAS officer or the sweeper’s son who becomes a billionaire are all triggers for a family discussion and the ‘secret’ behind these success stories always boils down to simple things like hard work, belief, commitment, excellence and upon digging, in a majority of cases, reading books. It comes as no surprise that grandmaster Gukesh Bommaraju loved books too! In fact, one of his favourites, ‘ Under the surface’ by Jan Markos has a wonderful quote, “ The most significant difference between a grandmaster and a club player is not simply that the grandmaster calculates more accurately, but rather that he sees more deeply.”

This is true of parents too. When it comes to wishing for the success of their children, every parent is fully committed but only a few ‘see’ more deeply. These are the ones who make sure that their children are exposed to a vast variety of books. They also make an example of ‘being seen’ to be reading themselves. Also, a vast variety of disciplines, beyond academics alone, are discussed with the children. This culture is a very big deal; it becomes a defining factor in the success and fulfillment of the children!

Scientific research supports this. A recent 2025 study published in Child & Youth Care Forum, established that parents’ literacy beliefs are linked to their home reading practices while both beliefs and practices are uniquely linked to increases in children’s reading performance. Using a nationally representative U.S. dataset, researchers noted that when parents value literacy, they are more likely to read with their children and these practices predict gains in children’s reading abilities over the kindergarten year, even when accounting for socioeconomic differences.

As per a joint study at Harvard , MIT and UPenn, during a story-listening fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) task, children who had experienced more conversational turns with adults exhibited greater Broca’s area activation (area responsible for speech production), which explains the relation between children’s language exposure and verbal skill. The study also found that conversational experience impacts neural language processing more than socioeconomic status (SES) or the quantity of words heard. How often this happens or fails to happen in the first five years of childhood turns out to be one of the best predictors of later reading.


What has emerged is that there may be a new kind of class divide

• Families that provide their children an environment rich in oral and written language opportunities.
• Families that don’t.

In an interview with TOI, reading coach and author Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta, shared, "In the first category, by kindergarten (roughly age four), a gap of 32 million words already separates some children in linguistically impoverished homes from their more stimulated peers! This is massive. What this means is that those children, who begin kindergarten having heard and used thousands of words whose meanings are already understood, classified and stored away in their brains, have a big advantage in the playing field of education."

She added, "Children who never have a story read to them, who never hear words that they can imagine and act out – such as fighting dragons with a spoon or using a broom between their legs as a horse to run around in response to a story – have the odds overwhelmingly against them. Parents must build this culture, even though there will always be the outlier child who will do well ,despite their circumstances."

A 2022 study published in Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, claimed that the number of books in parents' households, maternal reading attitudes and reading habits were significantly related” to children's literacy. This synthesis of research in India highlights that a rich home literacy environment — measured by factors such as book availability and positive reading habits — plays a vital role in nurturing children’s language and reading readiness.

This brings us to a powerful follow up question, “Are we smart because we read or do we read because we are smart?” Author Joe Henrich addresses this in his book, ‘ The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter’. The central argument in this book is as follows: “ Relatively early in our species’ evolutionary history....about 2 million years ago … cultural evolution became the primary driver of ... genetic evolution. The interaction between cultural and genetic evolution generates a process that can be described as autocatalytic, meaning that it produces the fuel that propels it. As genetic evolution improved our brains and abilities for learning from others, cultural evolution spontaneously generated more and better cultural adaptations, which kept the pressure on for brains that were better at acquiring and storing this cultural information.”

Here are some research‑backed tips and strategies that parents can use to cultivate a rich reading culture at home -

Start reading to babies early and often
An Australian-led study, Bookworm babies 'do better in kindy’, covered 86,000 parents across several countries and found that reading to a child four days a week from birth means they are more likely to show emerging literacy skills before they start school. Regular reading from birth, just 10–15 minutes for four days a week, boosts vocabulary, storytelling skills and early literacy readiness by age three while also strengthening parent–child bonds and interest in reading.

Create a structured, engaging reading routine
Teach Maverick guide for building a “Reading Culture at Home” encouraged setting a daily reading ritual like bedtime stories, using a fun cue (bell, song, reading hat). Let your child own elements: pick the book, set the timer, track milestones (e.g., with a sticker chart or “Reading Passport”). Adapt timings flexibly, and reinforce the habit with celebration.

Engage actively as shared reading builds comprehension
As per PIRLS 2021 data used in the study Active Home Literacy Environment, shared storybook reading, word games and storytelling “are positive” for reading comprehension and motivation. An enriched literacy environment at home — through regular narrative interactions and engaging literacy games — fosters deeper reading comprehension, enjoyment and even long-term academic success.

Improve reading motivation through positive modelling
A study in Frontiers in Psychology (2020) claimed that parents with a positive attitude to shared reading “performed better in linguistic tests,” mediated by a rich literacy environment at home. Parents’ own enthusiasm for reading shapes their children’s literacy environment and directly boosts children’s language skills like sentence comprehension and expressive grammar.

Henrich argues that we do not have all these tools because we are smart – we are smart because we have these tools. Gupta opined, "It is the products of cultural evolution, such as reading, that make us smarter. We receive a huge cultural download when growing up, from a base 10 counting system, to a large vocabulary allowing us to communicate complex concepts, to the ability to read and write, not to mention the know-how to survive. The more parents are aware of these evolutionary back stories, the more conscious they would be about the culture they set at home."

These cultural downloads cannot be devised in a few years by a few smart people. They comprise packages of adaptations developed over generations and for every individual child, their home is where this culture will reside and play out.