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Gender stereotypes, gender roles and the underrepresentation of women permeate modern American culture. These forms of sexism limit the socially acceptable ways that children are able to express difficult emotion as they move through the grief process. This study focusses on these forms of sexism as they influence the creation and continuation of gendered grief by coding seventeen children’s grief picture books. Findings support the hypotheses that, not only are gender stereotypes, roles and the underrepresentation of both men and women present in grief picture books, but that they contribute to gendered grief. Suggestions for future research include a larger sample size and in-depth looks at specific contributors to gendered grief. Keywords: gender, stereotypes, gender roles, picture books, gendered grief   GENDERED GRIEF IN CHILDREN’S MEDIA !5 References to Gendered Grief in Children’s Media: A Content Analysis of Grief Picture Books Machaila Budgeon Portland State University 22 May 2015 During the 1970’s, feminism began popularizing the modern idea of gender with the Women’s Liberation Movement. Gender is defined as; 1) sex, and 2) the behavioral, cultural and psychological traits typically associated with each sex (Gender, n.d.). These definitions of gender are among the most popular, and are also the definitions employed within this research. Since this popularization of gender, gender roles, stereotypes and their impacts have been studied on countless occasions. However, in the late 1990’s, with the heavy increase of support for the Gay Rights Movement, research on gender and its effects grew exponentially. Recently, in the United States, we have seen massive strides towards gender equality, including the famous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case of 1973, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, the Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education Supreme Court case of 2005, and, more recently, the 2013 announcement that the ban on women serving in combat roles would be lifted (Imbornoni, 2007). Gender inequality, that once was so obvious, is becoming less blatant as time goes on. Despite these massive shifts in political policy and social support towards gender equality, there is agreement among researchers and academics that gender inequality, in its most embedded of forms, maintains a strong hold on society and its cultural beliefs (Collins, 2011). Current statistics on a variety of sectors, from employment to prison, reflect these current sociocultural stances. Employment, for instance, is just one of the areas in a woman’s life that is affected by gender roles. Women earn only $0.81 for every $1.00 that a man makes, while one in five women are underemployed because they cannot find full-time work (DOL, 2011). GENDERED GRIEF IN CHILDREN’S MEDIA !6 Additionally, only 46.7% of women are employed at all; a large decline from the 60% employment rate of 2000 (DOL, 2011). Only 24% of the CEO’s in the United States are made up by these employed women (DOL, 2011). Gender issues aren’t just for women, though, as men battle gender roles and their effects just as often. Men, for example, make up approximately 93% of those in jails or prisons (Kilmartin, 2010). Men are also less likely than women to obtain an education with only 34.9% of men receiving a Bachelor’s degree (DOL, 2011). Each of these statistics show only the tip of the iceberg; a fraction of the sexism currently affecting every individual in the modern United States. Background Gender stereotypes, gender roles and sexism are largely related. While gender roles are typically the outward expression of one’s own gender identity, often being sorted along the gender binary, or male and female, an individual’s gender role is often expected to fall in line with gender stereotypes; or the assumption of an individual’s gender role based on their sex. Sexism, then, is the systematic and institutionalized prejudice against individuals who, often, are failing to fall in line with these traditional gender stereotypes or roles or are believed to be innately lesser based on their sex. Gender stereotypes, gender roles and sexism intertwine to create a widespread system of problems, like the aforementioned employment and prison issues. They are also deeply embedded in the current United States sociocultural beliefs and attitudes. In order to address each of these issues and their effects, the places where these ideas are generated and perpetuated need to be identified and attended to. The popular media is one of the best reflections of current sociocultural beliefs, including gender roles and gender stereotypes (Paterson and Lach, 1990). Women are frequently underGENDERED GRIEF IN CHILDREN’S MEDIA !7 represented across multiple types of media. When women are represented, they are frequently depicted as classically feminine, therefore maintaining feminine roles (Collins, 2011). Furthermore, when studies do find a more equal representation of women, especially in children’s picture books, the women tend to be portrayed negatively (Collins, 2011). Men, on the other hand, tend to be depicted in stereotypically masculine roles, and also rarely depart from traditional gender roles. They’re most commonly portrayed as aggressive, argumentative, and competitive (Evans and Davies, 2000). These sexist representations exist in the forefront of other various forms of media as well, including music videos, newspapers, magazines, movies, advertisements, television, video games and more (Collins, 2011). Media, then, is likely to perpetuate gender stereotyping by facilitating a cycle between sexist roles portrayed across popular media and the current sociocultural viewpoints of Americans. Children’s media is by no means immune to sexist stereotyping. In fact, textbooks, toy commercials, films, books, and other media geared towards children maintain the same sexist attitudes that media geared towards adults does (Collins, 2011; Evans and Davies, 2000; Kahlenburg and Hein, 2009; Hamilton et. al., 2006). In elementary school reading textbooks, males have been depicted as adhering strictly to masculine gender roles, by being portrayed as aggressive, argumentative and competitive (Evans and Davies, 2000). With very similar results, Kahlenburg and Hein (2009) found that boys are more often depicted outside and playing competitively than young girls are in toy commercials. This media, and its sexist and gender role conforming content, is likely to impact a child’s development and sociocultural beliefs. Children’s media, including picture books, has a large impact on a child’s development. Children’s books are the primary vehicle for the transmission of societal values (Paterson and GENDERED GRIEF IN CHILDREN’S MEDIA !8 Lach, 1990). They allow children to delve into topics that are relevant to their lives (Wiseman, 2012), while also encouraging them to create connections between their own lives and those of the characters (Wiseman, 2012). Identification with the picture books provides children with role models and ideas on what they will—or should—be like when they grow up (Paterson and Lach, 1990). By providing these role models and future expectations for children, picture books play a large, active role in maintaining social structure by molding young readers to fit in with that structure as they age (Paterson and Lach, 1990). This molding of young readers expands heavily into gender development. Picture books play a large part in gender role construction (Paterson and Lach, 1990). Between the ages of three to five, children start developing and incorporating gender stereotypes in their lives (Hamilton et. al., 2006). Children absorb this gender role information from media in order to form their own self concepts and gender schemes—how they view the role that gender has in their life (Paterson and Lach, 1990). These schemes and self concepts dictate how a child grows to see the world (Paterson and Lach, 1990). Gendered expectations present in children’s media also heavily influence a child’s level of cognitive development through an impact on cognitive processes, such as reading comprehension and memory recall (Paterson and Lach, 1990). By offering children standards for feminine and masculine gendered behavior and models for understanding these standards in themselves and others (Hamilton et. al., 2006), media plays an extremely important role in a child’s life . Picture books are no doubt a part of a young child’s typical school day. Children are also frequently exposed to books through local libraries and bedtime stories. However, it’s the implementation of books in counseling and therapy, known as bibliotherapy, that’s the main GENDERED GRIEF IN CHILDREN’S MEDIA !9 focus of this research. Bibliotherapy is implemented in classrooms and counseling settings for children who are experiencing emotional and physical hardship (Wiseman, 2012). Often times, a child may have difficulty defining and expressing emotions and ideas, specifically during times of loss (Berns, 2003). Children also tend to feel alone in their feelings and thoughts when experiencing these difficult emotions (Berns, 2003). Bibliotherapy helps to remedy these problems by lessening a child’s feelings of isolation and allowing them the opportunity to focus outside of themselves while expressing emotions and ideas (Berns, 2003). Bibliotherapy also allows a child to consider their own feelings and attitudes on a subject while reflecting on the similarities in their own lives in order to work past any difficult feelings that they might have (Wiseman, 2012). Bibliotherapy is often implemented for children experiencing grief or loss using grief picture books, or picture books focused on death and the grieving process, as these are times when a child is required to work through intricate emotions. It is these intricate emotions that often leave children—and adults—looking to their expected social roles for help. Gender roles, stereotypes

References to Gendered Grief in Children's Media: A Content Analysis of Grief Picture Books