The Berenstain Bears- Gender Roles-Mama Bear

The type of criticism that I am most interested in within the context of children’s literature is gender criticism. More specifically, criticism of gender/sex role stereotypes found in literature.  An article by Lisa Rowe Fraustino in our week three Electronic Reserve Readings, titled The Berenstain bears and the reproduction of mothering discusses this type of criticism. I find this very interesting because I grew up reading The Berenstain Bears. 

This article really opened my eyes to the gender stereotypes that are present in my all-time favorite series of children’s books, The Berenstain Bears.According to Fraustino: “These sex role stereotypes and the plots they play have contributed to ‘the reproduction of mothering’ in the next generation at a rate Nancy Chodorow might have found unimaginable when she coined the phrase in her seminal 1978 text”(2007). 

Fraustino goes on to say that, “Women who repeatedly write, illustrate, publish, sell, buy, teach, and read picture books that depict stereotypical gender patterns, to borrow Chodorow's words, ‘contribute to the perpetuation of their own social roles and position in the hierarchy of gender’”(2007). Fraustino concludes her article with these statements: “Parents listen to Mama and Papa” and “perhaps literary critics should, too, the better to influence the ever-ready Berenstains” (2007).

This has made me think about why I am, the way that I am. Ever since I was young kid, I’ve felt that its’ my job to keep everything neat and tidy around the house.  No lie, when I would go over to my friends’ house I would clean and organize their playrooms. I remember their moms’ surprised facial expressions, when they would come up to check on us. I also remember asking my mom for my own personal vacuum cleaner to keep my bedroom’s floor spic and span at all times. She bought me a portable one and I was way too excited about a vacuum cleaner, for a kid.

Did Mama Bear brainwash me into thinking that its’ my duty to keep a clean and tidy home? Or, is the saying "a clean home is a happy home" true?

Fraustino, L. R. (2007). The berenstain bears and the reproduction of mothering. The Lion and the Unicorn, 31(3), 250-263. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/221775008?accountid=35812