Every day teachers and parents have to choose among a great range of stories for kids to read. Some people prefer stories with a didactic purpose, some others try to find stories that make emphasis on values. Some people prefer choosing old stories, while some others prefer choosing new ones. But no matter the kind of story people are going to choose, it is certainly true that those stories will reflect throughout their pages the social characteristics of the society in which they have been immersed.
Among the great variety of children’s books one can choose is “ The Doorbell Rang” by Pat Hutchins. The story is set at a middle calss family house in which two children have to share the cookies prepared by thier mother with a lot unexpected guests, all of them being children. In this book, that has been published in 1986, it is possible to see a middle class family, the kind of house in which they live as well as some possessions they have. However, women seem to have a very traditional role for a book that has been published in 1986.
If you have a look at the illustrations you will see that the mother cleans the floor in almost all pages of the book.
However, it could be said that by 1986 the expected role of the woman was no longer the one of cleaning the house all day long. By that time women shared those kinds of responsibilities with their husbands.
It is also noticeable that the mother is dedicated to looking after her children and cooking meals.
By 1986 women were not expected to spend hours in the kitchen cooking or to look after the kids during the whole day. By that time her husbands, again, cooperated with them in carrying out those tasks.
All in all, when people are going to choose a story like “The Doorbell Rang” for their kids to read, it is significant that they take into account what aspects of society the book is reflecting. If they don’t care about those kinds of things children can get the wrong picture about what they are reading and, worse than that, they can misunderstand the role of their mothers.
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