The three bears are all boys: Mothers' gender labeling of neutral picture book characters

Two studies examined mother's labeling of gender-neutral characters in young children's picture books. In the first study, mothers and their 18- to 38-month-old children looked at three popular children's books together. The mothers' use of masculine or feminine names or pronouns to refer to gender-neutral characters was recorded. The data revealed an extreme masculine bias: 95% of all characters of indeterminate gender were referred to by the mothers as males. In a second study, specially prepared picture books were used to examine the effect of gender-relevant variables on the mothers' labeling. The results replicated Study 1 in showing a strong bias toward referring to neutral pictures with masculine labels: The incidence of masculine labels was again high and, in addition, was relatively impervious to most of the gender-relevant manipulations included in the books. The one variable that had a strong, consistent effect on the mothers' labeling was the presence of an adult in the pictures: Child Characters were nearly always referred to as males when they appeared alone; they were more likely to be given feminine or neutral lables when they were pictured in the presence of an adult. This result is related to Carpenter's [Activity Structure and Play: Implications for Socialization, in M. Liss (Ed.), Social and Cognitive Skills: Sex Roles and Childrens Play, New York: Academic Press, 1983] model of the development of sex-typed behavior. The data are also discussed with respect to the well-documented sexist bias in picture books for preschool children.This research was support in part by Grants HD-05951 from NICHHD and R01 MH33082-01 from NIMH to the first and third authors, respectively. We wish to thank Linda Roots and Elizabeth Lewis for their assitance with data analyses.