To find it deflating that majority of children's song/book characters are "he"?

[Radradrad]

To name some examples:
Five Little Monkeys (fell off and bumped HIS head. Every monkey in that song is male).

Miss Polly Had a Dolly (male doctor, though being a female doctor myself I always sing over it with "she") 😂 actually more accurate since the majority of GP's are women.

Don't get me started on dinosaurs in books and songs, no wonder the dinosaurs went extinct as it seems there wasn't a single female dinosaur?

And then shows like Hey Duggee, which I actually do like, but there are 6 main characters and only two are female. Why?! And I downright refuse to have Octonauts on as none of the main characters are female.

Omg one more thing, the fact EVERYONE thinks Bluey is a boy when she is a girl! Just because she isnt pink/wearing a dress. Asda even have her on boys underwear!

Is it just me?!

Dashi and Tweek are female!

Because men are the default in the patriarchy. I changed the pronouns quite often, especially Dear Zoo.

Just change the pronouns

It's so annoying! One female in Paw Patrol and she wears pink. Two out of loads in Octonauts.

No-one thinks Bluey is a boy, do they? I’ve never heard that.

Little Miss Muffet
Little Bo Peep
Cinderella
Red Riding Hood
Snow White
Goldilocks

But when it gets to fiction for older children it tends to be very female heavy.

Why can't you just change them to she/her etc that's what people have been doing for decades in education. Who says the monkeys have to be male?

Although I don't get the frustration at Bluey being on clothes for both genders. My son loves bluey why wouldn't he not want bluey clothing just because the character is a girl? They sell pants with bluey on for girls too.

Your time will come when almost all the Disney protagonists are female. I found myself frustrated there wasn't more male ones recently before I gave my head a wobble.

Theses nursery rhymes/songs have been around for something like a hundred years. It was just the times then. If you don't like them, do sing them. Find something more modern that suits your taste.

most characters tend to be female

Wait till your child gets to the GCSE English syllabus, full of male authors. Fortunately, me changing pronouns in her picture books has had some sort of awakening effect and she notices the problem.

Wow said the owl is great. The owl is a female owl. And just is female. There's no big hoohaa about oooh look a girl owl.

We ended up buying "boy pants" a fee years back as my child wanted one with a character on (I actually can't remember which one).

At that stage it wouldn't occur to a kid they're only supposed to like characters of their own gender (!?) and it made me really cross!

Similarly why do girl clothes all have skye on just because she's a girl as she wasnt my child's favourite

Also this is really good visual illustration

Bookshelf video

It's from the Rebel Girls ad but it's really good.

Of 100 best children books of all time (Time Magazine) only 53 actually had women who speak in it....

My kids are older but when I was younger I always made the doctor in Miss Polly female and alternated the sexes in Dear Zoo. I even swapped round the names in The Magic Faraway Tree so Bessie was the leader, Fanny was the sensible middle child and Jo was the cry baby. We all loved Mrs Pepperpot and Pippi Longstocking though, anarchic Scandi females are the way to go! As others have said, picture books are particularly bad but there are lots of good females as they get older. Agree that secondary it's very white male (our school has recently modernised and they now study The Hunger Games in Y7 but for years it was Treasure Island, the most boring pirate story ever according to DD1).

@GettingBetter2024 but there's an awful lot of children's books where there's no boy characters (or they are unimportant back ground ones).

Bluey has a sister as well doesn't she? Bingo I think. Grandmother who occasionally watches with GC.

I don't get the issue with Miss Polly, I mean Miss Polly is clearly female or are we saying we should only have females featured? Nothing wrong with a bit of balance surely.

DS loved the Maisy Mouse books when he was little. Maisy is clearly a girl.

Except when we were reading Doctor Maisy, DS decided that meant Maisy was a boy 🤦‍♀️ No idea where he got that from, I was pretty shocked at the time. Had to get out the other books to prove Maisy was a girl!

I found the same in children's books more characters seem to be male. Bit annoying!

YANBU. I used to get upset about this as a child!

This did really annoy me. One girl in six characters and she dressed in pink and spoke in a squeaky voice 🙄 I'm surprised it made it onto TV without anyone noticing the problem. They clearly realised later though because they introduced Everest, a much better female character.

I agree, most characters male as default and when they’re female they have ridiculous eyelashes or red lips or pink clothing. I change from he to she often.

they’re also often looking for their mummy or need their mum etc. it’d be nice to have some male caring roles too, DDs dad is very hands on so it’s weird when any upset in a book and they need “a cuddle from mum” etc.

@Workawayxx have you not read The Gruffalo's Child?
The Gruffalo is the Dad, the child is a girl.

This has been interesting for me. I've only seen snippets of Bluey, my kids are a bit older so missed it. I've only just realised that I, without any reason, assumed Bluey was a boy 😳 I need to address my unconscious prejudices!