The Berenstain Bears and the Reproduction of Mothering

The Berenstain Bears and the Reproduction of Mothering

The Berenstain Bears, named after their creators Stan and Jan, are the most successful mass-market family in the publishing world, with over three hundred million copies sold, over 250 products published as of November 2005 (August), and thirty-eight paperback titles selling over one million copies each since publication as listed in Diane Roback's All-Time Bestselling Children's Books. Though no sane critic is likely to consider adding the Berenstains to the literary canon, their work does not provide a rich source for cultural study. Year after year, book after book, Papa bumbles around in his blue overalls while Mama dispenes wisdom in her polka-dotted housecoat and cap, while brother does his boy things in his bold, blue pants and red shirt, while sister does her girl things in her pink, polka-dotted blouse and pink jumpsuit. These sex role stereotypes and the plots they play have contributed to "the reproduction of mothering" in the next generation at a rate Nancy Chodorow might have found unimaginable when she coined the phrase in her seminal 1978 text.

Researchers who study how books influence children have found, "The longer children were exposed to materials containing sex-bias and stereotypes, the more sex-stereotyped their attitudes became, and the longer those attitudes were retained" (Peterson). The franchise of the most successful series in children's book publishing history is still going strong enough for HarperCollins to have "acquired the rights to more than 50 new Berenstain Bears books in five different formats" in 2003, citing the characters as "timeless" (20). Except for a few days in 1984 that I'll talk about later, the Berenstains have been keeping Mama at home with her broom and engraining children with timeless sex-bias for almost forty-five years. It's important to deconstruct this prima donna mama of the mass market because as William Moebius says so well, "The conventions surrounding gender will have as long a shelf life as the books that take them for granted" (129).

With the death of Stan Berenstain in November 2005, the franchise has been continued by Jan and their two sons, Leo and Michael. In 2001, the fortieth anniversary of the first book, Random House teamed up with Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment to "release a second wave" of Berenstain videos to combat the third wave of feminism—wait, no, to "teach kids some useful life lessons in an entertaining fashion." These videos came packaged with a bonus "Parents' Guide" booklet that "offers advice to moms and dads in dealing with everyday family issues and refers readers to helpful corresponding Bears videos" (McCormick 55), and in 2005 Random House published The Bear Essentials: Everything Today's Hard-Pressed Parent Needs to Know about Bringing Up Happy, Healthy Kids. In the preface Stan and Jan admit: "The last thing we expected when we created our funny, furry family ('they're kind of furry around the torso/a lot like people, only more so') was to find ourselves pressed into service as experts on the art of parenting. We freely acknowledge that we are without any qualifying licenses or certificates." The couple who met in art school and made their way to fame and fortune by cartooning about everyday family life in popular magazines have become the voice of everything a parent needs to know simply because they receive letters by the thousands from parents asking for advice . . . from their Bears.

In their 2002 autobiography, Down a Sunny Dirt Road, the Berenstains describe their first meeting with their first children's book editor, Ted Geisel, the editor-and-chief of Random House's Beginner Books but better known as Dr. Seuss. They express surprise at finding out how seriously Geisel took the job, surprise at learning that their book had "internal workings" to discuss. To them, it was "just a funny book about these bears...