TV for toddler - is ANYTHING suitable? I've veto'd Postman Pat, Peppa, Rosie ...

[FrozenNorthPole]

... it's just all so incredibly pink & predictable. Have made a list of things that have been ruled out.

Postman Pat - men go out to work, women stay at home. Apart from traditional female roles / unskilled clerical (Mrs Goggins), and the needlessly butch female doctor.

Peppa - just ugh. So pink, so inane, have avoided most TV episodes but people keep buying us books. All females in dresses. Shit plotlines. Men Daddy Pigs go out to work. Mummy Pigs don't.

Rosie - a female heroine at last. But wait ... everything is covered in flowers and is pink. Female 'heroine' (and simpering smaller female) endlessly conciliatory and bow to others' whims. Petulant & disruptive boy plays football on his own.

In the night garden - would be okay apart from upsydaisy who is in no way okay. Oh, and the Pontipines / Wottingers.

Something Special - hmm, struggle with this one. Does Aunt Polly count as female character? Is Lord Tumble part of the higher echelons of the patriarchy?

Me too - shit.

Balamory - women in traditional female roles, men in traditional male roles.

Timmy time - ooh. Perhaps this one okay?

I may have overthought this. Have always had these feelings about the tv programmes but having recently acquired some proper patriarchy goggles I'm putting my foot down and trying to make more positive choices on DD1's (2.5 years) behalf.

Any views?

What about CHUGGINGTON
(chuggy chuggy chuggy)

we quite like fireman sam here, the girls are not girly girly and go skateboarding, they have penny the firefighter and normans mum is a single parent who runs the shop.
there are some bits that annoy me, like the female nurse, but it's on the whole quite good.

OP please relax, this is way too much thinking, pepper pig is pink but so are pigs, postman pat, has a female post office owner, female gp, female vet and female coffee shop owner. anything with justin fletcher is full of sterotypes, but it humour that children understand, let the children watch and enjoy, all this gets a little silly imo,

Too much thinking. That's a phrase that is used quite a lot in dismissing feminist analysis of pretty much anything.

How is thinking going to hurt anything? Will I not have enough time to polish DH shoes?

I do have a theory on the gender stereotyping within the cbeebies community.........its purely for the parents who haven't got a clue! The children could not careless whether they are man/woman/type of vegetable/animal/robot. I find myself quite often wondering what gender the teletubbies are as I am frequently asked by my dd (3.5) who has just got interested in boys/girls

And there is always Nuzzle and Scratch.............

There's the age thing too... why are all the CBeebies presenters young? Where is the modern-day equivalent of Tony Hart?

re complaints at my "too much thinking" comment.
its childrens television, its not meant for adults to watch and analyse, its our adult over thinking that changes the program from being how to share, or how to make new friends to becoming a poilitcal forum.

don't like it, don't watch that simple,

i was not dismissing anyone.

oh happy shoe polishing by the way

It's definitely worth thinking about. These are the messages that young children are being fed on a daily basis about women's place in society.

I don't think many people think about these things enough.

Of course you were dismissing our concerns. You did it again.
If the television programme can show children how to share, why isn't it also showing them how to conform to gender stereotypes if that is what is being depicted?

Jess, many people don't think about these things. at all.

Unicorns?

When I was little we had a globe with all the countries marked on it.
I liked it and it was educational. I am female too.

That sounds really interesting. I shall google.

I'm as feminist as they come but can't say I've ever been worried by Postman Pat. There's a female GP.

I like Postman Pat on its own though it is a bit stereotypical, but it's so sweet I forgive it.
What DOES bother me, though, is when a few hours of scheduling goes something like
Postman Pat
Timmy Time
Bob the Builder
Something Special
Big Cook Little Cook
and its just boy after boy after boy after boy. Then after a couple of hours you get Come Outside and breathe a big sigh of relief.
Milkshake has far more girl main characters but then you get the blasted Lelli Kelly adverts.

You have every right to over-think, and with a million+ kids programmes these days, you can also be choosy.

For toddlers in my house, Pocoyo is a very popular choice. He's more androgenous in the earlier episodes I think, and there is a good balance of male and female characters (though only a male narrator, but it's Stephen Fry) and male, female, and both focused episodes. Much fun and mayhem with large pink elephant and yellow hat wearing duck.

One that my toddler reeally likes (as in, will swivel to the TV at the opening song) is 'The Cat in the Hat knows a lot about that'. Warning that the songs can really get stuck in their (and your) head. Boy and Girl main characters that are pretty much equal in adventure stakes, and the characters they go to for advice/information is equal between male and female, pretty much. I also quite like before they go on adventures, the Cat always has them go ask their mums.

Hana's Helpline and Little Bill also work well I think, though probably for older kids.

Also need recording/fast forwarding functions to get past horrid adverts, that comes very much in handy and sanity.

Peppa Pig is just fine - Daddy Pig often cooks and does laundry, and mummy Pig works. Big Cock Cook -Little Cock Cook is fine from a gender perspective (although fecking annoying in all other respects), all of Justin's programs are good. Big Barn farm is fine. Thomas The Tank Engine, however, is the stuff of the devil.

"You have every right to over-think, and with a million+ kids programmes these days, you can also be choosy"

That was my initial perspective, I think. I should have said in the original post that we watch barely any TV but I like to record a couple of series so DD1 can have one or two episodes at weekends. I find recording episodes easier than just popping the TV on as i) no adverts ii) once it's over, it's over ... it doesn't lead into heated toddler debates about "but I want to watch THIS now!", and iii) I don't have to watch the really annoying stuff. Hence my comfort with 'censoring' her viewing (thanks Funnys ) and hence my freedom to decide exactly what she watches. Of course, if she's not interested in something or requests something else, I tend to honour that. It's not like I'm dragging her screaming away from the set, but rather that I'm actually of the opinion that, at age 2, it really is up to me what she watches. As she gets older, it'll be more collaborative but for now I don't feel like I'm oppressing her or anything.

Having had a night to stop feeling so mortified and embarrassed about the thread getting so many replies (I was hoping for one, maybe two) I also started feeling a bit of a coward for apologising for overthinking. It seemed to me a very submissive thing to have done. Overthinking is what I do for a living. It drives some people around me mad but that's just who I am. I really believe that early TV exposure can be and generally is a formative experience - Marika Tiggemann and Hayley Dohnt's findings on this (e.g. 2006) have really influenced me. There's both a dose-response effect of media exposure and appearance aspirations, and an effect of type of tv watched. Importantly, the paper I mention above demonstrated temporal precedence.

I think my main mistake was underestimating Peppa Pig. In penance, I ordered a dvd today

Mummy Pig is a mumsnetter I am sure.

ok have obviously caused offence, i don't tend to think too much about content above age suitability, nor do i see the inferred sexism in the themes explored, if i was dismissive then i appologise, it was unintensional, maybe i should think a little more about what they watch.

as for feminism, would rather equality for all