Incidental Gender Lessons: Children’s Media Characters as a Platform for Learning about the Sexes

• In Event: 14.044 - Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: 14.044-4 - How/Am I Different? Identity Construction Across Categories of Difference

Abstract

Nearly half of American children, ages one to four, spend one to two hours viewing media daily (Rideout, 2011), yet there is a paucity of research on incidental, social lessons they may be learning from children’s media and its characters. This study reveals new information on links between young children’s media viewing, character familiarity and gender knowledge.

The findings of the investigation, which was conducted in 25 childcare centers across Massachusetts, reveal that children’s daily media viewing and their access to character-based products significantly predicted their familiarity with media characters. Further, character familiarity and to a lesser extent, children’s character-based dolls, were significant predictors of children’s gender knowledge. Implications for extensive exposure to gender stereotyping on gender-schema development is discussed.

Author

• Barbara Colombo-Adams, University of Massachusetts - Amherst