This article analyses the pedagogic discourse of family literacy, a type of education that works on the literacy development of both mothers and young children. It looks at the strand concerned with the adults' literacy and argues that the pedagogy aims to construct the participants as reflexive, but unquestioning, learners ready to accumulate qualifications; and as mothers whose time is constantly available for their children's cognitive development. The analysis traces the relationships between these desired identities and new capitalist ideology and discusses the contradictions inherent in this vision of motherhood.