Gender Disrupted During Storytime: Critical Literacy in Early Childhood

Storytime plays an instrumental role in Western early childhood education (ECE). According to Crisp and Hiller (2011), “a primary means of transmitting cultural values from one generation to the next is through the telling of stories and, in the United States [as in Canada], this commonly comes in the form of children’s literature” (p. 197). Storytelling through picture books is used to teach children about social norms and boundaries, including regulations and expectations about gender performance, identity, and expression. Although picture books are diverse in content and representations of reality, influential messages about gender are imparted through the sharing of stories. In this way, gender is a story in and of itself through which children are socialized. Legacies of what I refer to as the Victorian sex-gender binary (VSGB) continue to shape cultural understandings of gender today. A bodily linkage, the VSGB refers to the medicalized and social processes of categorizing children as gendered. Since the Victorian era (1837–1901), binary sex designation at birth (as male or female) carries with it social expectations for binary gender identity (as a boy or girl) expressed in a binary way (masculine or feminine). However, the boundaries of social constructs like the VSGB are limiting for children who do not identify with— nor experience their bodies according to—dichotomies of sex or gender. Featuring picture books about gendernonconforming characters during storytime therefore makes ECE more inclusive, and empowering, of gender diversity.