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STUDY: Early childhood books encourage gender stereotypes

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Young girl in pajamas sitting on her head with a slice of bread in her hand while reading a book

By Georgia Lambert via SWNS

Children's books may encourage gender stereotypes, new research reveals.

A new study from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison has found that books written for kids may perpetuate gender stereotypes and solidify early childhood thoughts about gender roles.

Dr. Molly Lewis, a cognitive scientist, and special faculty member at the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences was the lead author of the study.

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"Some of the stereotypes that have been studied in social psychology literature are present in these books, like girls being good at reading and boys being good at maths," she said.

Dr. Lewis found that books with gendered language were centered around the lead character in the story.

While female-associated words focused on affection, the educational books used communication verbs like explained and listened.

Meanwhile, the male-associated words focused more on professions, transportation, and tools.

Dr. Lewis, who teaches in the departments of psychology, social and decision sciences at Dietrich college, added: ā€œThe audiences of these books [are] different.

ā€œGirls more often read stereotypically 'girl' books, and boys more often read stereotypically 'boy' books.ā€

Dr. Lewis went on to say that girls are more likely to have books read to them that include female protagonists than boys.

Because of these preferences, kids are more likely to learn about the biases surrounding their own gender while the other genders go unnoticed.

In the study that revealed these findings, the research team analyzed 247 books written for children five years and younger from the Wisconsin Children's Book Corpus.

When scanning the stories, the team found that the books with female protagonists had more gendered language than the books with male protagonists.

The team believed that this was because men have been historically seen as the default gender.

Whereas, female-coded words and phrases aren't the norms and so when they do crop up, they are more notable.

The researchers then compared their findings to how adult fiction books are written and they found that children's books displayed more gender stereotypes than fictional novels read by adults.

When exploring their bookshelf of reads, the team examined how often women were associated with good, family, language, and arts.

At the same time, they examined how often men were associated with bad, careers, and maths.

Compared to the adult books, which were fairly gender-neutral, the childrenā€™s books were far more likely to associate women with language and arts and men with maths.

Mark Seidenberg, a professor of psychology at Wisconsin, was the contributing author of the study.

ā€œOur data is only part of the story ā€” so to speak," he said.

"They are based on the words in childrenā€™s books and say nothing about other characteristics that matter: the story, the emotions they evoke, the ways the books expand childrenā€™s knowledge of the world.

"We donā€™t want to ruin anyoneā€™s memories of ā€˜Curious Georgeā€™ or ā€˜Amelia Bedelia.ā€™

"Knowing that stereotypes do creep into many books and that children develop beliefs about gender at a young age, we probably want to consider books with this in mind.ā€

"There is often kind of a cycle of learning about gender stereotypes, with children learning stereotypes at a young age then perpetuating them as they get older," Dr. Lewis said.

ā€œThese books may be a vehicle for communicating information about gender. We may need to pay some attention to what those messages may be and whether theyā€™re messages you want to even bring to children.ā€

The study's findings were published in the journal Psychological Science.

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