The Influence of Early Childhood Media in Promoting Speciesist Ideologies

Abstract

While communications and media research has been conducted on the influence of children’s literature in shaping the attitudes of children towards various marginalized groups, the specific impact of anthropocentric viewpoints and speciesist ideologies conveyed through imagery and narrative in early childhood literature has been largely overlooked. The goal of this article is to use a critical literacy approach to analyze poignant examples of early childhood literature in the English language canon, and to draw links between the ways in which these media normalize the oppression of non-human animals in similar ways to that of other historically marginalized human groups. The author argues that seemingly innocuous works such as baby board books, picture books, and nursery rhymes, can have a profound impact on shaping the attitudes of children towards non-human animals, and thus, demonstrate a pressing need for more narratives that decenter human characters and interests, emphasize the personhood of non-human animals, and take an anti-speciesist approach towards storytelling in order to work towards dismantling systems of oppression that actively harm non-human animals.