Stereotypes Of Children
Early in a child’s life, they begin to read. They read with parents, at school, and by themselves as a pastime. In the books, young children read are male and female characters stereotyped which hurts the child in the long run. Children learn from the world around them and what they read if a book is gender stereotyped children may think the world is as it is in their stories. A gender stereotype as defined by United Nations Human Rights is “a generalized view or preconception about attributes or characteristics that are or ought to be possessed by, or the roles that are or should be performed by women and men.” (United Nations Human Rights, ohchr.org). Gender schema is another term used frequently and that can be defined as “Gender schema
…show more content…
theory refers to the theory that children learn about what it means to be male and female from the culture in which they live. According to this theory, children adjust their behavior to fit in with the gender norms and expectations of their culture.” (Cherry, abouthealth.com). Benevolent sexism is “a chivalrous attitude toward women that feels favorable but is actually sexist because it casts women as weak creatures in need of men's protection.” (Plous, understandingprejiduce.ord). As shown through the studies of Mary L. Trepanier-Street, Mykol C. Hamilton, Dianne Johnson, Wilma H. Dougherty, and Amanda D. Diekman, children read books and get an understanding of themselves and of others. Children’s literature is full of different lifestyles, jobs, and opportunities to teach children about the world, one thing these books fail to not be stereotypical against men and women. Men are mostly shown doing the adventuring and jobs like police officer, firefighter, or mechanic while women are shown working at the house and doing domestic chores or jobs like secretary, nurse, or teacher. Do children have a different view of the world after reading a gender biased or gender stereotyped book? As I have done my research on this topic I have noticed many will redo a study or make slight variations to studies done in the past. Some of these studies involved looking at award winning books and finding what gender was more prominent while others had children fill out surveys on thoughts before and after reading a certain book. Mykol Hamilton and other parties involved looked at 200 popular children's books to see if sexism in children's literature matters and how it affects the children. This study found that male characters appear in story books more often than females by 53% and that the occupations shown in the stories are gender stereotyped. In one test these experiments conducted they looked at all 200 books and classified jobs as traditional, non-traditional, gender neutral occupation, or no occupation and found that most occupations shown in children's books were predominantly traditional occupations. A traditional occupation in this sense is a job that is stereotyped as male or female such as how an engineer is a male job and a secretary is a female job. A study done by Wilma Doughetry and Rosalind Engel focused on the total character count and what gender they were. They compared what they found to what others found over the past twenty-five years. They looked at the years 1981-1985 and compared their findings to work done throughout the years of 1951-1980. The first finding from 1951-1955 was that 54% of characters were male with 46% being female and in the study during 1981-1985 57% of characters were male with 43% being female. With the studies done in the in-between years, male percentages ranged from 59% to 72% which shows that throughout the years the sexism in children's books has never gotten better but did improve slightly from 1976-1981. These two also looked at total image count of male and female characters in the years 1976-1980 and 1981-1985. In 1976-1980, the total image count of male characters was 73% while females were 27% and in 1981-1985 the male image count was 63% and females were 37%. Throughout those years, images in picture books became more diverse and showed more female characters compared to the male characters but male characters still dominated the image count much like the character count. Mary Trepanier-Street and Jane Romatowski studied how children viewed different jobs before and after reading non-stereotypical children books. The children in this study were asked to take a pre-test to see what gender they thought did each job and then after reading non-stereotypical books they took a post-test on the same subject. The sections they could place a job in male, female, and both. During the pretest children viewed carpenters, mechanic, and firefighter as predominantly male jobs and hair stylist being the only female dominate job leaving nurse, police officer, doctor, teacher, dancer, secretary, cook, cashier, and ambulance driver as a job both genders do equally, pilot was a job that was tied between male dominance and both gender dominance. After the not-stereotypical books were read by or to the children they re-took the test and the findings were that all jobs became both gender job. All jobs on the list were shifted to being a job both genders could do and no job was listed as a male dominance or female dominance. This study, done by Amanda Diekman and Sarah Murnun, investigated if the equality in non-sexist books was truly equal. To measure this Diekman and Murnun gave the participants, who read ten books without knowing if they were sexists or non-sexist books, a list of mannerisms and were asked to write if these mannerisms appeared never, almost never, almost always, or always in the books they read. The books used in this experiment are classified in non-sexist, Queenie Peavy; Alice in Wonderland; Where the Lilies Bloom; Ramona Quimby, Age 8; Harriet the Spy; Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon, Maybe; Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth; The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler; The Island of the Blue Dolphins; and Bridge To Terabithia, and sexist books, A String in the Harp; The Wish Giver: Three Tales of Coven Tree; The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear; The Mouse and The Motorcycle; Charlie and The Chocolate Factory; James and The Giant Peach; The Wheel on The School; A Ring of Endless Light; How To Eat Fried Worms; and Miracles on Maple Hill. The findings showed that there was no difference in the sexist books and non-sexists books on feminine personalities but masculine personalities were more equal in non-sexist books than in sexist books. All studies help prove that children do have different views on the world after reading books. The methodology that would be used would be to have older children read books and younger children have books read to then have them answer survey questions.
A random sample one hundred kids ages three to seven and have one group of all three to four-year-olds and another of six and seven-year-olds. The age groups being separated is to see how children view the world after they have something read to them as opposed to reading something themselves as well as seeing how age affects their view on the world and gender stereotypes, The books would be separated in two categories of sexist and non-sexist and assigned to the children without them knowing what category the books are in. Before the books were handed out all the children were given a pre-test to determine their views on each gender. The children would read all books over a two month period and then come in to take a survey about the books. The younger kids will be given simpler versions of the questions the older children will be getting. Questions on the survey would be yes, no questions and some requiring a short answer. Younger kids would be given the survey orally to make sure answers are able to be read and interpreted and older kids would be given the survey in a written format. Questions that would be asked would be. Do you think a female can be a mechanic? Can a male be a nurse? What is common role women take in the books you read? These questions would be asked during the pre-test and the post-test the exact same way to ensure the results would not be skewed. Yes, no questions are used to ensure answers are easy to categorize and the short answer questions are to give background on why the children answered the way they did. Another piece of information that would be recorded by the experimenters would be a number of females to male ratio of characters, female to male main title character ratio, and female to male image count. Though this is not an initial part of the study this could help add to
why the children's views changed if they did and if they didn’t why not. Data would be collected and would be calculated and a statistical test would be used to find a statically significant difference in the pre and post-tests. Limitations in this study would be getting one hundred children in the ages I need them to be in. Any study involving children is harder to achieve than a study was done with adults because children can not consent to a study like an adult can. Children’s parents are required to sign a consent form stating that their children are allowed to participate in the study. Another would be the fact that not all young children like to read and they only have two months to go through the books in the list. Children are not people to think of others they are quite narcissistic which means it is hard to force a child to do something they do not want to do. With the way the study is set up, there is no way to track when the children are reading and if they are actually reading which could cause a problem with the survey answers not changing due to reading materials not being read. An assumption made is that the group of younger children will be affected less by the readings than the group of older children because they are not experiencing the story first hand for themselves they are experiencing it through their parents. Another would be that the older group of children show more of a change because they have experienced more real world situations. The information found in this study is useful to show that children are shown to be affected by what they read and what they experience. This information would help picture book writers understand how they should represent genders in the books the write and how illustrations and characters are a huge part of a child's learning experience. If any of these studies would help show an author how what they write affects a child in how they view the world around them and themselves then these studies would be worth it. Young children are very impressionable and everything in their life influences how they learn. Do children have a different view of the world after reading a gender biased or gender stereotyped book? This question is something that not only helps in the aiding of teacher children it helps in the aid of showing children more about their life and the life of the people around them. CHildrens books tend to be male dominated in main title characters, general or background characters, and overall images. These books also show a gender stereotyped view on jobs and basic mannerisms of the male and female personality. These books show women being domestic doing household chores, caring for the children, cleaning the house, doing the laundry and dishes, while men are shown adventuring, being risky, and saving the damsel in distress, another stereotypical female role in children's literature. Children’s literature is an important part of the society we grow into after we read these tales. We see how the world works and how we as a person would fit into the world around us. Children learn from the adults they are around the books they read, movies they watch, and any sort of media shown to them. This research helps children fit into the world they are growing up in.
theory refers to the theory that children learn about what it means to be male and female from the culture in which they live. According to this theory, children adjust their behavior to fit in with the gender norms and expectations of their culture.” (Cherry, abouthealth.com). Benevolent sexism is “a chivalrous attitude toward women that feels favorable but is actually sexist because it casts women as weak creatures in need of men's protection.” (Plous, understandingprejiduce.ord). As shown through the studies of Mary L. Trepanier-Street, Mykol C. Hamilton, Dianne Johnson, Wilma H. Dougherty, and Amanda D. Diekman, children read books and get an understanding of themselves and of others. Children’s literature is full of different lifestyles, jobs, and opportunities to teach children about the world, one thing these books fail to not be stereotypical against men and women. Men are mostly shown doing the adventuring and jobs like police officer, firefighter, or mechanic while women are shown working at the house and doing domestic chores or jobs like secretary, nurse, or teacher. Do children have a different view of the world after reading a gender biased or gender stereotyped book? As I have done my research on this topic I have noticed many will redo a study or make slight variations to studies done in the past. Some of these studies involved looking at award winning books and finding what gender was more prominent while others had children fill out surveys on thoughts before and after reading a certain book. Mykol Hamilton and other parties involved looked at 200 popular children's books to see if sexism in children's literature matters and how it affects the children. This study found that male characters appear in story books more often than females by 53% and that the occupations shown in the stories are gender stereotyped. In one test these experiments conducted they looked at all 200 books and classified jobs as traditional, non-traditional, gender neutral occupation, or no occupation and found that most occupations shown in children's books were predominantly traditional occupations. A traditional occupation in this sense is a job that is stereotyped as male or female such as how an engineer is a male job and a secretary is a female job. A study done by Wilma Doughetry and Rosalind Engel focused on the total character count and what gender they were. They compared what they found to what others found over the past twenty-five years. They looked at the years 1981-1985 and compared their findings to work done throughout the years of 1951-1980. The first finding from 1951-1955 was that 54% of characters were male with 46% being female and in the study during 1981-1985 57% of characters were male with 43% being female. With the studies done in the in-between years, male percentages ranged from 59% to 72% which shows that throughout the years the sexism in children's books has never gotten better but did improve slightly from 1976-1981. These two also looked at total image count of male and female characters in the years 1976-1980 and 1981-1985. In 1976-1980, the total image count of male characters was 73% while females were 27% and in 1981-1985 the male image count was 63% and females were 37%. Throughout those years, images in picture books became more diverse and showed more female characters compared to the male characters but male characters still dominated the image count much like the character count. Mary Trepanier-Street and Jane Romatowski studied how children viewed different jobs before and after reading non-stereotypical children books. The children in this study were asked to take a pre-test to see what gender they thought did each job and then after reading non-stereotypical books they took a post-test on the same subject. The sections they could place a job in male, female, and both. During the pretest children viewed carpenters, mechanic, and firefighter as predominantly male jobs and hair stylist being the only female dominate job leaving nurse, police officer, doctor, teacher, dancer, secretary, cook, cashier, and ambulance driver as a job both genders do equally, pilot was a job that was tied between male dominance and both gender dominance. After the not-stereotypical books were read by or to the children they re-took the test and the findings were that all jobs became both gender job. All jobs on the list were shifted to being a job both genders could do and no job was listed as a male dominance or female dominance. This study, done by Amanda Diekman and Sarah Murnun, investigated if the equality in non-sexist books was truly equal. To measure this Diekman and Murnun gave the participants, who read ten books without knowing if they were sexists or non-sexist books, a list of mannerisms and were asked to write if these mannerisms appeared never, almost never, almost always, or always in the books they read. The books used in this experiment are classified in non-sexist, Queenie Peavy; Alice in Wonderland; Where the Lilies Bloom; Ramona Quimby, Age 8; Harriet the Spy; Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon, Maybe; Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth; The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler; The Island of the Blue Dolphins; and Bridge To Terabithia, and sexist books, A String in the Harp; The Wish Giver: Three Tales of Coven Tree; The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear; The Mouse and The Motorcycle; Charlie and The Chocolate Factory; James and The Giant Peach; The Wheel on The School; A Ring of Endless Light; How To Eat Fried Worms; and Miracles on Maple Hill. The findings showed that there was no difference in the sexist books and non-sexists books on feminine personalities but masculine personalities were more equal in non-sexist books than in sexist books. All studies help prove that children do have different views on the world after reading books. The methodology that would be used would be to have older children read books and younger children have books read to then have them answer survey questions.
A random sample one hundred kids ages three to seven and have one group of all three to four-year-olds and another of six and seven-year-olds. The age groups being separated is to see how children view the world after they have something read to them as opposed to reading something themselves as well as seeing how age affects their view on the world and gender stereotypes, The books would be separated in two categories of sexist and non-sexist and assigned to the children without them knowing what category the books are in. Before the books were handed out all the children were given a pre-test to determine their views on each gender. The children would read all books over a two month period and then come in to take a survey about the books. The younger kids will be given simpler versions of the questions the older children will be getting. Questions on the survey would be yes, no questions and some requiring a short answer. Younger kids would be given the survey orally to make sure answers are able to be read and interpreted and older kids would be given the survey in a written format. Questions that would be asked would be. Do you think a female can be a mechanic? Can a male be a nurse? What is common role women take in the books you read? These questions would be asked during the pre-test and the post-test the exact same way to ensure the results would not be skewed. Yes, no questions are used to ensure answers are easy to categorize and the short answer questions are to give background on why the children answered the way they did. Another piece of information that would be recorded by the experimenters would be a number of females to male ratio of characters, female to male main title character ratio, and female to male image count. Though this is not an initial part of the study this could help add to
why the children's views changed if they did and if they didn’t why not. Data would be collected and would be calculated and a statistical test would be used to find a statically significant difference in the pre and post-tests. Limitations in this study would be getting one hundred children in the ages I need them to be in. Any study involving children is harder to achieve than a study was done with adults because children can not consent to a study like an adult can. Children’s parents are required to sign a consent form stating that their children are allowed to participate in the study. Another would be the fact that not all young children like to read and they only have two months to go through the books in the list. Children are not people to think of others they are quite narcissistic which means it is hard to force a child to do something they do not want to do. With the way the study is set up, there is no way to track when the children are reading and if they are actually reading which could cause a problem with the survey answers not changing due to reading materials not being read. An assumption made is that the group of younger children will be affected less by the readings than the group of older children because they are not experiencing the story first hand for themselves they are experiencing it through their parents. Another would be that the older group of children show more of a change because they have experienced more real world situations. The information found in this study is useful to show that children are shown to be affected by what they read and what they experience. This information would help picture book writers understand how they should represent genders in the books the write and how illustrations and characters are a huge part of a child's learning experience. If any of these studies would help show an author how what they write affects a child in how they view the world around them and themselves then these studies would be worth it. Young children are very impressionable and everything in their life influences how they learn. Do children have a different view of the world after reading a gender biased or gender stereotyped book? This question is something that not only helps in the aiding of teacher children it helps in the aid of showing children more about their life and the life of the people around them. CHildrens books tend to be male dominated in main title characters, general or background characters, and overall images. These books also show a gender stereotyped view on jobs and basic mannerisms of the male and female personality. These books show women being domestic doing household chores, caring for the children, cleaning the house, doing the laundry and dishes, while men are shown adventuring, being risky, and saving the damsel in distress, another stereotypical female role in children's literature. Children’s literature is an important part of the society we grow into after we read these tales. We see how the world works and how we as a person would fit into the world around us. Children learn from the adults they are around the books they read, movies they watch, and any sort of media shown to them. This research helps children fit into the world they are growing up in.