Initial literature review

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This essay answers the question on how children perceive, understand and perform gender from characters that appear in children television programs. Studies have proven that “television endorsed more gender stereotypic beliefs” (Morgan, 1982:501) and this essay will examine from a qualitative approach on the effect that it has on children from their preference of gender-role characters, content in television programmes to the imitation and understanding of gender-related content. For this reason, this essay will explore the use of television by children, the understanding that children have over the television content they consume, the impact that television has upon children, the construct of gender-related knowledge they build through television programs, the stereotypical and counter stereotypical boundaries that television programmes create and the reflective gender-stereotyped characters that children identify with based on biological factors, socialisation and cognitive development. This short introduction pretends to introduce these factors and to show the importance of gender identification through children’s characters television programmes study.

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The reason of this study is the intent to interpret how television translates gender to children. It has been studied that “children become aware of gender stereotypes portrayed on television at a very early age” (Morgan, 1982:501). They can start “identifying gender as male and female and associating it with subtle personality traits” “by age 10 or 11” (Williams, Bennett and Best, 1975). This means that television has the power to build up a gender-related knowledge to children through their characters in television programs which children will take as role models to understand and identify with. 

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It has been previously researched and proven that television has an impact on children. Children are ‘active viewers’ (Carlsson, 2010), which means that while they watch television, they unconsciously receive passive information like gender and adopt it in their lives. Children have a simplistic way of seeing the world, as Brown calls it: “simple-minded” (Brown, 1976:84). This means that what they perceive is divided like “good or bad, hard or easy” or in this case, when we talk about characters in a television program, male or female (Brown, 1976:84). Television programs addressed to children use this as a political strategy to communicate, for example, gender identity.

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Children reacting positively towards what they watch means that they begin to understand gender and adopting it to themselves. Brown also emphasises the studies that show how children start acting in a similar manner from the models they have been following on television (Brown 1976:237). “Research has demonstrated that” shaping gender is giving a message to children which “can have a large impact on one´s belief, attitudes, and behaviours” (Shrum, Wyer and O´Guinn, 1998 in Martin, 2017:499).

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Thus, there is an importance in analysing the messages the television programs are giving as it is one of the main influences for children. “Stereotyped images impact children´s beliefs about their self-worth, beliefs about occupations, beliefs about their bodies, and beliefs about relationships” (Martin, 2017:500). The power that mass media has upon children, specifically children television programs, is to create role models that children are going to imitate in real life, for example the role of parents (Lefkowitz and Huesmann, 1980). The question is, how do children perceive and understand gender? Liben and Bigler (2002) examined the explanations that children have of gender as essentialist ideas. Firstly, as essentialism is based on, it has a biological explanation which is the understanding and awareness of the differences between men and women, male and female. Secondly, children learn the stereotypes of sex and gender through their environment copying models they are surrounded with. For example, relevant to this essay “is the exposure to mass media plays a role in the socialising children into gender role stereotypes at a very young age” (Berryman-Fink, Ballard-Reisch, and Newman 1993 in Bakir and Palan, 2010). In other words, children observe and imitate the gender stereotypes in which characters are presented on the television programmes they watch (Ruble, Balaban and Cooper, 1981). The third explanation of how children perceive gender, is “gender constructivism”, which suggests that children are constantly making up their own ideas of sex and gender instead of being something they learn biologically or from their social environment (Liben and Bigler, 2002). This is a “cognitive development”, theory that Piaget (1954) studies on how children are constantly learning about gender at the same time that is happening around them.

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Considering these theories on how children perceive gender, we can conduct a study to understand to what extent television addresses children and has an impact on their cognitive recognition of gender. We need to consider that there are many factors that will change the perceptions of gender in television programs. These include: the difference between educational and entertainment shows (Martin, 2017) which is linked to the difference of content reception between television programs children choose to watch opposed to the ones they do not favour (Greenberg, 1988); and programmes that have reality or fantasy content which will imply how characters are able to behave, resolve problems, and participate with their environment (Schramm et al, 1961).

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Researchers have studied all these different factors that influence the capacity of learning and adopting gender-related content through television, but others have also focused on the uses of television by the children (Schramm et al, 1961). It is important to know why children watch television to be able to identify which are the programmes that have a higher influence in order to communicate gender-related content. Firstly, Schramm says that children watch television as a passive pleasure to be entertained. It is a “form of escapism” to disconnect from the “real-life boredom” (Brown, 1979:119). This are entertainment programmes. Secondly, there are the television programmes that give out information to teach children how to behave, dress, communicate and grow. These are called educational programs (Martin, 2017). Finally, there are the programmes that are have social utility, programmes that are addressed not only to children but also to adults, sometimes, and have a purpose to watch it in group and create conversations from the topic (Brown, 1970). 

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To conclude this introduction, we have found that television has an important impact on children’s behaviour. Television programs are able to create role models through characters which children are going to imitate in real life. It is massively important to understand how children react to the stereotypical and counter stereotypical characters and to understand how they receive and perform gender from of that, because it will give a sense of the importance of children television programming, as they are educating the future of our society.

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