@iheartteletubbies33 The show has an extreme heterosexual slant to it - I promote equality. I actually reviewed this as part of an assignment for my Psych 101 class, in which I needed to analyze a children's cartoon with emphasis on reviewing stereotypes and gender identity. It provides an interesting perspective! Caillou, an animated half hour cartoon episode is based on a four-year-old Caucasian male living in a heterosexual home with his Mommy, Daddy and little sister, Rosie. I viewed this episode called When I grow up on PBS Sprout. Each episode of Caillou has three short episodes with subsets of information intermixed with it. The gender roles were very stereotypical throughout the show. The mommy and sister were usually in dresses. The mommy does work outside the home in an unspecified profession but at home, she is shown cooking, cleaning and sorting. The daddy is very involved with Caillou and a majority of the show focused on him spending time with his son. The mother and father are shown in bed together in one scene when Caillou goes in to wake them, establishing a pattern of heterosexism. The father seemed to take on a caring, sensitive role with Caillou, helping to tuck him in, reassure him and comfort him when he became distressed. All roles that would be primarily perceived as containing feminine characteristics, the daddy showing him how to play football and displaying masculine traits balanced this. The only scene where Rosie was not doing traditional girl activities was when Caillou’s father was showing him how to play football; Rosie was shown in the background playing with a toy car. As a child we all watched TV. Whether it was in the form of a VCR, DVD, or an actual satellite television we all experienced it. Half of our parents shoved us in front of a tv when we bothered them, or when we refused to go to sleep. Whether or not this was a good decision made by our parents we will never know. The writers and producers of American television try to create a utopian society which they display for millions of children to see. They use our social norms and cultural values to create characters that subliminally project what they want to see in the world. In a children's cartoon named Caillou, Caillou is a 4 year old boy who is very imaginative, and creative. He tends to imagine situations and solve his own problems with the help of his father. He is the poster child for four year olds. Rarely does Caillou get in trouble although he does troublesome things. Caillou has the 3 family members and one cat. His mother, father, and a little sister. The mother is the typical household mother. She is a middle age Caucasian woman that she cleans and cooks and takes care of the children. She doesn't have a job nor does she often leave house unless the children accompany her. She tends to stand in the background while the father usually helps Caillou with his problems. She reinforces Calliou’s emotions, and tends to offer emotional advice rather than strategic advice to help solve problems. The father is the typical strong household man. While the mother cleans and cooks the father works and exercises inside the house. He is considered Caillous hero because he offers strategic advice to all of his problems. Cailluos younger sister is named Rosie. She is about 2 or 3. She is just beginning to speak but is able to understand all of her surroundings. She is sometimes a menace to Caillou but in the end they are one big happy family. She doesn't fit in with Caillou and his friends because she is younger so she tends to be with the mother for majority of the time. Another minor character is Gilbert the cat. It seems that most typical families have one animal living in the household.Other characters include his three friends who are of different races. There is an Caucasian teacher who teaches Caillous kindergarten class. Feeding into the mainstream ideas that a perfect family has two children typically one boy and one girl and a happy couple as the parents. The show Caillou perfectly demonstrates the utopian society that most Americans believe in. The Caucasian parents are happily married with no financial difficulties. The son typically is imaginative and caring of his little sister. While the little sister helps the mother clean and stays out of the way. The father is the role model of the family and supports the financial needs of the household. There are only about 5 characters that are monorities. Most of the Caucasian characters appear in each and every episode while the minorities tend to appear once every 3 episodes and play an extremely minor role. Although it may seem that Caillou is a typical children's show for 2-6 year olds. There is a subliminal message created that in America a typical family should be Caucasian with four people and an animal. There should be no financial problems and each person in the household has there own place. One thing I've learned about children's TV programming is that parents have widely varying opinions about what they like and don't like. Most of my friends like Yo Gabba Gabba because it's got good music and has artwork that reminds us of the video games we grew up on. But those are just my friends. There are some out there who find the Cyclopes-ish, phallic tube creatures that populate the show disturbing. I happen to really like Oswald the blue octopus, but have a friend who can't stand the Backyardigans. There's no accounting for taste. I understand. So I'm going to give you a few purely narcissistic reasons why I like Caillou, and one point of principle. Hopefully, you'll find the point of principle as persuasive, if not more so, than my own peculiar taste in kids' TV. I like Caillou because it's Canadian, and I have a crypto-Canadian sensibility. It snows in Caillou-land, just like it did when I was a kid and where we live now. I go back and forth on whether Caillou's family lives in Montreal or Toronto, two of my favorite northern cities. They live in a big old house like the one I grew up in, with a cat like I had, and Caillou is bald, or has a big round head, or maybe flesh-colored hair, sort of like my son for his first year. His grandparents are involved, the way mine are. They seem to be close to canoe country, and live in a city with good public transportation -- a subway, even -- two things that give me personal joy. I can relate. Yet there are viewers out there who dislike the show. They think Caillou is whiny, and that if your kids watch the show they will become whiny, too. There are a number of comments to this effect on the show's website. Personally, I think this is nonsense: Caillou has a range of emotions, some of which include frustration, impatience, and anger, just the way one of the characters on each episode of Ni hao, Kai-Lan usually gets "mad" or "frustrated" in order to illustrate how people experience social situations. But, as they say, whatever. The real reason Caillou is a cut above the rest is because -- and here's the point of principle -- he looks after a younger sister. A younger sister? Big deal, you may say. In fact, however, it is a big deal. I admit here and now that I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of children's television programming over the last 40 years, but my sense just from watching PBS and Nick Jr are that it's rare to see a show with an older brother nurturing a younger sister. Caillou doesn't always know what to do with little sister Rosie, but at least he gives it a shot. He is older, he is the role model, he has the responsibility for watching after a younger sibling -- all things that are traditionally associated with female nurturing. Where else do you see this kind of male nurturing in kids' TV? So I say: Go Caillou! You do your fair share of whining, have a preternaturally large, round, hairless head, and have a name that means, not coincidentally, "little stone" in French. Show us how you can help Rosie learn to find her way in the world, and how a boy is fully capable of taking care of a younger person. Caillou can do it, which means that when he becomes a man and has a wife or partner and children, he'll be able to take care of them, too -- without the constant presence of a female tutor. I find it funny that every single time an issue is on my mind, I end up coming across an article of some sort on the topic. I recently noticed that Go-2-baby is fascinated with Caillou. She walks around the house saying his name, gets excited when she sees a photo of him and even sings along loudly during the theme song. My toddler officially has a favorite cartoon, or at least one she recognizes. Being that her birthday is about 2.5 months away, now is a perfect time to discover her character of choice. Initially, my thoughts were to do a Disney Princess or Hello Kitty Party, but her amusement of Caillou has changed those plans completely. At first, I felt that it may come across strange if I hosted a Caillou themed birthday party for a little girl. After all, Caillou is a boy and some may argue that a party themed after the cartoon would be quite "boyish," for lack of better terms. So tonight, I just so happened to be scrolling down my Facebook timeline and came across a link shared by a friend of mine. The headline immediately caught my attention because it read, Toys R Us agrees to drop 'boys' and 'girls toy labelling The story itself is dated back in April, however the website appears to be the home of a parent led organization working to end the gender labeling on toys for children. While I think that there are some toys that skew closer to one gender as opposed to the other, I applaud the effort of these parents who are trying to make it so that children are free to like whatever type of toy or character they please without being forced to follow gender rules at an early age. I think parents are less concerned with girls playing with trucks and tool sets than they are when a little boy wants to play with a dollhouse or dress up like a princess. I've been surfing the web for the past few days gathering ideas on how to make this Caillou and friends themed party as gender neutral as possible. I know that I wouldn't be doing the same thing if Go-2-baby was a little boy who was fascinated with Angelina Ballerina or something similar. I guess it make sense, for little girls we want them to grow up feeling that they can do anything a boy or man can do, but we tend to raise our boys to be masculine or else. I'm really leaning towards making this Caillou party work for Go-2-baby, although there's a part of me that still feels like maybe she should have a party more fit for a little girl. Just seeing that article makes me feel like I'm doing the right thing by working with something she likes for her party. After all, whose birthday will we be celebrating? Last year, we did Sesame Street with a focus on Abby Cadabby as opposed to Elmo or Big Bird. This year its all about the character who she seems to draw closer to, and for us that happens to be a little bald boy who goes by the name of Caillou. Do you draw gender lines when it comes to purchasing or even allowing your children to play with toys or watch certain cartoons or movies? I'm curious to know how young parents really start to draw these lines with their children. I obviously wouldn't dress my daughter in boys clothing, or vice versa if I had a son, but are toys and cartoons the same as clothing? I'd love to hear from my readers on this one?