Stereotypes In Picture Books

In recent years, there has been a growing debate about the representations in picture books. Picture books can have a huge influence on a child’s perspective on race, cultures, gender, or even expectations of themselves. A picture book can be a child’s first exposure to the world outside of their own. Walker, a researcher, addressed the idea about how children’s literature has an impact in elementary age children. They convey that children’s literature contributes to children’s ability to have a sense of self, a sense of others, satisfaction, and enrichment purposes, (1964). In other words, children’s picture books are used to help develop more than one area in elementary school aged children. This goes to show how important it is to have …show more content…
In the past, many researchers have found that very traditional gender roles were always portrayed and were worried about the message society was sending to children. Past research found that women were mostly depicted in aprons, standing over a kitchen, or always attending family needs. Furthermore, they found the representation of women’s roles was highly unrealistic, (Stewig & Knifel, 1972). They suggested that more picture books should represent women outside the home playing a variety of roles. They supported this idea especially because from the years of 1840-1920’s women fought hard in order to be able to have equal rights. Therefore they thought that women should be depicted in an accurate …show more content…
The researchers then updated their journal 4 years later and found that women were represented slightly more, but were again presented in more traditional roles. They also found that there was a huge difference between female and male descriptions. Females were always described as dull, bland, and colorless, while males were described in a more independent, persistent, and active way, (Weitzman, Hokada & Ross, 1972). This is important because research in the past found that children’s literature portrayed men and women in a more traditional way and very little was being done to change that as the years passed. This can be very problematic because as I have mentioned before children will then get the idea that this is the way they are supposed to be. This can be seen in another study done by Flannery and Watson. They studied 114 third, fourth, and fifth graders and asked them to draw pictures for them and also made them take the Children’s Personality Action Questionnaire (CPAQ). They found that male children were more inclined to draw violent images, while females weren’t, (1995). Although this may seem trivial, it is in fact crucial because they brought up the idea of socialization.They discuss the idea that perhaps these boys were being raised to be more violent, strong, or masculine because this is what society has been telling them since they were born. This is