Television Cartoons: Do Children Notice It's a Boy's World?

This study, a part of a larger project, investigated what children learn about gender roles from cartoons and how these cartoons might color the children's view of the world. A total of 89 children ranging in age from four to nine were sampled from three different locations (a university-affiliated day-care center and two parochial schools near the university). Interviewers were eight trained senior-level university students in a Women and Communication class. Interviews with the children lasted from 4 to 10 minutes. Results indicated that: (1) children watched more "chase-and-pratfall" cartoons than any other type, but the favorite cartoon type for nearly half of the children was continuing adventure; (2) a strong correlation existed between continuing adventure cartoons and more stereotypically male behaviors; (3) children attributed more of all behaviors to boy characters than to girl characters; (4) both boys and girls described boy characters' behavior as violent and active, but only the girls recognized that boys' behaviors made an impact on girl characters; (5) a majority of children perceived male and female characters in stereotypical ways; (6) children identified very few "real job" behaviors for either boy or girl characters; (7) children whose mothers worked outside the home reported that boy characters engage in fewer stereotypically male behaviors; and (8) the type of cartoon preferred by the children had an impact on their perceptions about cartoon characters. (Contains 51 references and 3 tables of data.) (RS)