Traditional Gender Roles
There were a few television shows that reinforce the traditional gender roles assigned to both men and woman. “I Love Lucy”, “The Jeffersons”, “Goodtimes”, “All in the Family”, “My Wife and Kids”, and “Fresh Prince of Bell Air” were all traditional gender role television shows. All of these shows had the men working and the women were taking care of everything at home. “The Jeffersons” were a little different than the rest because they had Florence there to do all of the housework and Mrs. Jefferson didn’t do much at all around the house unless she wanted to of course. Another show was “The Brady Bunch” this show was also different from the rest because although they had Alice there to help Ms. Brady because she had a lot of children, she still did a lot of house work herself. There are some movies that have traditional roles which are “Love and Basketball”, “Cheaper by the Dozen”, “Premonition”, and “Coming to America” are all movies were the husband works and the wife is home taking care of the family and the house. Although in the movie “Cheaper by the Dozen” the wife does write a book but realizes that her role as a stay at home is very important because when she went on her book tour she realized that the father could not handle working full time and taking care of a household full time was a lot more than he could handle. There were also a few cartoons that have traditional gender roles as well. “The Flintstones”, “The Jetsons”, and “The Simpsons” although they are cartoons as mentioned earlier they are show how the man works to provide for their families but the woman are the care takers of the family. There was in an article in the “Australian Journal of Psychology” called Gender and race portrayal in children’s picture books: An analysis of recent Caldecott Medal winners. The article states that, “This research investigates recent Caldecott Medal winning children s picture books. Seventeen books are evaluated through the examination of central
Cited: Kohler-Flynn, H. "Gender and race portrayal in children 's picture books: An analysis of recent Caldecott Medal winners." Australian Journal of Psychology 55 (02 Aug. 2003): 50-50. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Peirce CollegeLibrary. 5 Oct. 2008
Richard T. Schaefer. “Social Construction of Gender”. Sociology 11th Edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1983-2008. 298-99