Televised Gender Roles in Children’s Media: Covert Messages

Encountering stereotypes promulgated by media representations is a daily occurrence. Information perpetuated in the media continually influences how people view the world. Female gender roles portrayed in television, for example, have altered from the 1950s stay-at-home mother portrayed by Barbara Billingsley in Leave It To Beaver, to postmodern portrayals of independent actress/mothers such as Jane Seymour. The messages that such diverse personifications suggest of motherhood are equally disparate. While television once perpetuated images of mothers as in the home caregivers, this domestic characterization has evolved into moms who now venture actively into the world