The Portrayal Of Children 's Books

In her speech, and the article, titled “The Case for Good Taste in Children’s Books,” Meghan Cox Gurdon addresses the controversy on Young Adult Literature. Throughout her speech at Hillsdale College she labels this current category of fiction as gaudy, inappropriate, and sacrilegious. Gurdon’s claim on the content of YA, for Young Adult, books obtains effectiveness through her ability to incorporate real world examples, the claim made by the opposing view, and a moral push.

Children learn to process information in terms of an evolving gender schema. According to (Hetherington & Parke, 2016, Chapter 15) “Gender schema theory suggests that children develop naive mental schemas that help them organize their experiences in such a way that they will know what to attend to and how to interpret new information. According to this theory, we should expect individual differences in how gender-schematic children will be”. This gender-based schematic processing is at the heart of the present account of sex

Gender stereotypes affect children substantially. From the baby boy in blue with trucks and action figures to the baby girl in pink with dolls and princesses, these roles and generalizations affect children’s personalities while they are still developing. Those guiltiest of stereotyping in children’s media are Disney, Nintendo and other video-game companies, and reality television. These influences are expansive, and they reach past elementary-age kids to teenagers. Stereotypes negatively impact children of all ages through these forms of media, and parents need to be aware of this.

Study on gender role stereotypes has shown that there are several negative effects of stereotyping. The study on how gender role stereotyping effects children is not as prevalent because most believe that it doesn’t matter, since children are just forming their stereotype so children do not care. However, some psychologists have done some research on it, and from their research found out that children used a mixture of moral and social conventional reasoning

In a society filled with gender stereotypes, children often adopt gender roles as they move from childhood to adolescence because of the many factors that influence their views to the point they will deny certain roles because it does not fit the gender bias. During the early years, boys and girls will usually be drawn towards gender specific activities. Playing house for example, they little boy will imitate going to work, while the little girl will imitate cooking in the kitchen and playing with the baby doll. Gender stereotypes are embedded in our culture as a social identity giving “norms” to how gender is defined. This paper is going to discuss the child’s earliest exposure to gender roles in the home from clothing, toys and expectations to society’s role in gender bias on early childhood development.

Gender stereotypes are common in the United States today, even though many men and women have been working hard to defeat it. The task is made difficult however, when society in general implants the idea of gender roles into the mind of a child. Two authors, Judy Mann of The Difference and Bernard Lefkowitz of Our Guys face the issue of gender roles and stereotypes, and how they affect our lives today.

Although many are unaware, a rigid and relentless culture of outdated, and misguidedly created gender roles, act as an unofficial supreme law of land, and dictate how our society functions, and who it functions for. The strict structure of gender roles mandates how we behave, how we appear to ourselves and to others, and how we linguistically communicate, all of which play an immensely important role in our society. Even at the young age of four, children have acquired the social competence to declare whether a specific toy is marketed towards boys, or marketed towards girls, just by the outwards appearance alone; and while theses characteristics are not necessarily harmful or hurtful to the child at four years old, they can potentially turn adverse and inimical, causing harm to others in both physical, and emotional fashions. The wide spread concept and belief in gender roles has continuously through time been protested and thought of as a broken mold, and with a close analysis of the book Lord of the Flies, author William Golding, subtly, yet progressively, proves this notion through his intricate and convoluted method of storytelling.

The way, in which gender roles are portrayed in children’s literature, significantly contributes to the development of children’s gender roles and how they are perceived by society.

The media, society, and even human nature in itself affect children's decisions in some shape or form. While this can sometimes influence children in a positive way, it also limits children the ability to be free in decision making. In the article, “Why Boys Don’t Play With Dolls” the author, Katha Pollitt, emphasizes that gender roles and gender stereotypes in children are actually a product of parental influence and society’s influence. It is not children who

Renowned op-ed writer Claire Cain Miller in one of her articles, "Boys and Girls, Constrained by Toys and Costumes" brings our attention to the distinction between boys and girls for choices, this difference leads to the long-term notion of gender roles in the minds of the children. Claire's article is trying to sensitize the general public against gender difference. She tries to be sentimental by pointing out that the gender war started long before we were born, thus having the presence of a gaunt definition of what is for girls and what is for boys.

Reading novels is an experience unlike any other. With the crack of a new book, the reader is transported into the pages, into a new land, ready to take on the role of protagonist. Each little girl has the chance to be a pirate-fighting hero, each little boy able to become the doting husband. If that sentence sounds strange, it is because society has socialized individuals to gender any and all activities, reading included. Elizabeth Segel drives this point home in her article “As the Twig is Bent… Gender and Childhood Reading,” which gives an in-depth analysis of gender in children’s book, and the implications it has for readers.

Inclusive gender representation in children’s books gives young people validation of their own identity and promotes acceptance within their community. Male, female, and transgender representation in children’s literature will be studied and the importance of representation will be explained.

Since the 1970s, there has been a significant increasing in academic interest surrounding gender in children’s literature. Peter Hunt (2009) argues literature has gained academic focus as society comes to recognise how it can shape it “in fundamental and long-lasting ways” (15-16). This is particularly true of children’s literature, which Hunt argues functions as an “introductory exposure” for children to “recurrent ideas” about culture and

The 2001 film Spy Kids is about two children Carmen and Juni Cortez who must save their parents who are spies captured by a children’s television star by the name of Floop. Carmen and Juni are often at odds with each other with their contrasting personalities. Carmen is an independent and confident older sister while Juni is the scared and younger brother who does everything wrong. It is apparent that the time gap between the analyses of children’s books done by Lenore Weitzman in her journal Sex-Role Socialization in Picture Books for Preschool Children and the release of Spy Kids shows great progress in the dynamics of male and female gender roles shown in media.

According to the social learning theory, the influence of the media in the formation of gender roles and identity is known as being indirectly and vicariously reinforced. It states that we can learn gender appropriate behaviour by learning from others. So by having gender stereotypes portrayed in the media, it has a powerful influence on all of us but especially on children because they are currently