Children’s Literature VS Race/Gender Roles
From the day of our birth to the day of our death we are constantly influenced by the people and the world around us. From these influences around us, we learn how to dress and act according to our culture. A gender role is a combination of both social and behavioral norms that, within a specific culture, are widely considered to be appropriate/fitting for individuals of a specific sex. Common gender roles in our culture are how an individual should dress, act, and their personal interests/hobbies. Each sex has a certain way of presenting themselves in our culture as a boy and as a girl. Boys are influenced towards messy or dirty activates with large amounts rough play, while girls are influenced …show more content…
Gender role influences start far before our own births, names and gifts already guide us down the path of these gender roles. Our culture’s views of gender roles are constantly changing with every generation, yet we still follow the roles of gender. Before television became a common household item, children would often turn to radio and books for pleasure. The plots of radio and book stories often follow a strong male hero or a beautiful young princess that needs saving. Then as many children do, they tend to aspire to be just like their story book hero’s. The stories we hear as kids are a big influence to gender roles even if we are often not aware of it. To illustrate the power of gender roles in children’s literature, we need to look at past books or novels then lead into our current time era. The books written during each time era of history reflect the struggles, issues, and views of that time period. While many stories published then will seem outrageous or obvious to us now, they are the building blocks …show more content…
There is a growing need to educate children of different races, abilities, and genders. Multicultural, and non-sexist children’s literature gives not only students in the "majority" an understanding of their "minority" peers struggles, triumphs, and contribution to our culture and society. Using children’s books to educate based on racial class status creates an othering effect. Children’s literary is largely dominated by books that depict the experiences of white males which reinforces not only white male privilege but also sexism and miseducation. Several researchers have documented that children’s books are lacking in the areas of Asian, Hispanic, African-American, disabled, and female characters (Heinsz). After surveying many titles of books written for children in order to determine if boys or girls names were more frequently included in the title (Ernst, 1995). The findings were that boy’s names appeared around twice the amount as girl’s names. Then books that did have a gender neutral name, or a girl’s name, turned out to be about boys (Ernst, 1995). A shocking study conducted by The Book Center found that of the 3,600 children’s that were published in the year 2012, only 3.3% of books had African American main characters, 2.1% were Asian, and only 0.6% were native American (Graff). That leaves the other 94% to be assumed as white, which means only 6% of books for
From the day of our birth to the day of our death we are constantly influenced by the people and the world around us. From these influences around us, we learn how to dress and act according to our culture. A gender role is a combination of both social and behavioral norms that, within a specific culture, are widely considered to be appropriate/fitting for individuals of a specific sex. Common gender roles in our culture are how an individual should dress, act, and their personal interests/hobbies. Each sex has a certain way of presenting themselves in our culture as a boy and as a girl. Boys are influenced towards messy or dirty activates with large amounts rough play, while girls are influenced …show more content…
Gender role influences start far before our own births, names and gifts already guide us down the path of these gender roles. Our culture’s views of gender roles are constantly changing with every generation, yet we still follow the roles of gender. Before television became a common household item, children would often turn to radio and books for pleasure. The plots of radio and book stories often follow a strong male hero or a beautiful young princess that needs saving. Then as many children do, they tend to aspire to be just like their story book hero’s. The stories we hear as kids are a big influence to gender roles even if we are often not aware of it. To illustrate the power of gender roles in children’s literature, we need to look at past books or novels then lead into our current time era. The books written during each time era of history reflect the struggles, issues, and views of that time period. While many stories published then will seem outrageous or obvious to us now, they are the building blocks …show more content…
There is a growing need to educate children of different races, abilities, and genders. Multicultural, and non-sexist children’s literature gives not only students in the "majority" an understanding of their "minority" peers struggles, triumphs, and contribution to our culture and society. Using children’s books to educate based on racial class status creates an othering effect. Children’s literary is largely dominated by books that depict the experiences of white males which reinforces not only white male privilege but also sexism and miseducation. Several researchers have documented that children’s books are lacking in the areas of Asian, Hispanic, African-American, disabled, and female characters (Heinsz). After surveying many titles of books written for children in order to determine if boys or girls names were more frequently included in the title (Ernst, 1995). The findings were that boy’s names appeared around twice the amount as girl’s names. Then books that did have a gender neutral name, or a girl’s name, turned out to be about boys (Ernst, 1995). A shocking study conducted by The Book Center found that of the 3,600 children’s that were published in the year 2012, only 3.3% of books had African American main characters, 2.1% were Asian, and only 0.6% were native American (Graff). That leaves the other 94% to be assumed as white, which means only 6% of books for