My Little Pony and Paw Patrol in doghouse for negative stereotypes

‘It is so important that children from all types of families see themselves represented in the shows’

arts and Entertainment Editor SHOWS such as My Little Pony are prejudiced against the working classes and Fireman Sam gives a negative portrayal of a single mother, a study of children’s television has found.

The report said that PAW Patrol, a cartoon about a team of dogs that save the day, perpetuates gender stereotypes because most of the dogs are male.

The findings are contained in Is TV Making Your Child Prejudiced? which looked at 50 popular children’s shows and judged them on inclusivity and representation.

Only nine per cent of the viewed material showed working-class families, the report found, with mansions and palaces commonplace.

The social distinctions are made obvious in My Little Pony, the authors said, where “the unintelligent, ‘working-class’ goat characters are given strong southern US accents”.

In Pontypandy, home to Fireman Sam, tearaway Norman Price repeatedly gets himself into trouble. That could be seen as a failure of parenting, according to the report, with his single mother, Dilys, shown as “incapable”.

The study was carried out by Hopster, a children’s app creator, which said “more work needs to be done to help positively shape the perceptions of our youngest generation”.

One positive example cited was Go Jetters, which was praised for “featuring a male unicorn as a lead character” and an episode in which male characters lean in to kiss each other. But the report concluded that children’s cartoons and television shows fail to represent black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) characters, the LGBT community, disabled people, women and the working class.

One third of content viewed perpetuated gender stereotypes, showing “boys who fight” and “girls who are image-orientated”.

It cited PAW Patrol, “where, although all equally capable, there are only two female dogs alongside the five male leads”.

“White characters dominated the content,” the authors said, although they said Teletubbies was a good example of “non-real life characters achieving BAME representation” through visuals and voiceovers.

Concerns were also raised that just 16 per cent of content studied displayed disability, and often did so negatively.

Nick Walters, the company’s founder, said: “Many shows aimed at preschoolers are entertaining and educational, but it’s clear from our research that stereotypes still creep in.

“It’s so important that kids from all types of families see themselves represented in the shows they watch.”

Content on streaming services and Youtube was found to be worse at representation than more traditional forms of media.