Gender Roles in Children’s Literature

"Everything we read...constructs us, makes us who we are, by presenting our image of ourselves as girls and women, as boys and men" (Mem Fox, 1993).
I took a ‘Gender in Communication’ class last semester where we studied just exactly how we inherit gender roles. One of our projects of the semester was to find a children’s book that expressed specific male and female gender roles. Of course, this was not hard at all. Turns out, almost all children’s literature is intentionally teaching it’s young readers how they should act.
This, however, can be dangerous. From as far back as these ancient fairy tales, teaching girls to be subservient, boys to rule over them, to rescue the powerless. So from an early age children are interpreting their gender roles with these characters, helping promote the idea of a independent and strong man, and a weak and helpless girl. Is this the message we want to send to our young? As we know, children are eager to learn and be molded. While we are thankful for the morals that come out of these stories, we must be aware of the power this literature has over kids. Hopefully, as our society ages, our minds become more open to things, children’s books will evolve with that, allowing kids to make up their own mind of what kind of characteristics they want to hold.