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?!

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has six main characters, and they’re all female. (A New Generation put one token male in the main five characters.) There’s nothing wrong with all-male main characters in books or TV or movies, as long as other things have all-female main characters or mixed-sex main characters to balance it out.

Quoting from a different post:

We haven’t really watched Octonaughts but I didn’t know there was no girls.

There aren’t “no girls” - there are six males and two females. My daughters like that Tweak, the female bunny character, is an engineer “just like Daddy.” 🙂

That’s the one I was thinking of! Female animals are only allowed to be SAHMs or nurses. Glad to hear some of the books have been updated as they are otherwise interesting and fun.

Lassie was a heroic dog, maybe she doesn't count as she was trans as the "actor" portraying her was born male. Disgusting really, pushing his way in and robbing a born female of her right to be the star. In fact more than one male dog played Lassie and I don't think she was ever played by a female dog.

I still loved Lassie when I was a child, wouldn't miss an episode.

I'm wondering about Champion the Wonder Horse now.

@Iwasafool I think Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was a boy but played by a girl 😂🤔
I will Google......

Well these trans animal actors are everywhere. So confusing!

On a serious note it is weird isn't it, I mean there must be loads of female Collies and male kangaroos.

@Iwasafool ok a quick Google says Skippy was female and she was played by 9 different kangaroos. Google doesn't say if they were male or female 😂
Now to Google Gentle Ben and The Littlest Hobo.....

My son thought for a while doctors were all women, because all the GPs he'd seen were women. It was a bit funny because his grandfather is a doctor, but I suppose he never really saw him at work.

Kids often over-generalize when they are young, I don't think it makes much difference long term.

@Iwasafool ok so Gentle Ben and Littlest Hobo were both boys and played by (various) boys.
But in the TV series Woof about a human boy who turns into a dog - the dog was played by the famous Pippin the Dog who was female.
Go Pippin !

Books like Dear Zoo are old enough that it was normative to use the male pronoun when the sex was unknown, especially for animals. Similarly to the way 'man" could be used to mean both human or a male person, depending on the context.

I find when younger people read books like that now the assumption tends to be that they were all meant to be male animals, whereas the reality is that the reader was meant to understand it as meaning the sex isn't known. (Or really, would pick that up intuitively, as most of us wouldn't stop to consider the sex of imaginary animals in a kid's story.)

Anyone who is bothered now can use "she" for some , or I suppose "they" if preferred.

There are female characters who aren't SAHM or nurses in Richard Scarry. Officer Flossy.. Or the mouse who is a mechanic.

But at the time they were written, lots more women were SAHM than are now. So it's not like it's unrealistic.

I'm sorry, I have to take a stand here. @MasterBeth, Lilo and Stich does not have a male protagonist. Stitch can't even talk, Lilo is the main character.

Sorry, just saw this. Yes, Gruffalo's child is a big favourite here 😊. It's just one of few.

You may well be right. It's been a long time!

We saw it at the cinema and I think my youngest was terrified by it, so I may not have been paying full attention!

Fair enough, I couldn't scroll past that one, sorry! Justice for Lilo, who is a great female character!✊