Much of young children’s media reproduces and confirms racist, colonial, consumerist, heteronormative, and patriarchal norms

Oh, dear. Professors Timmermand and Ostertag managed to evade campus security and have escaped into the general public where their ideas are withering under the onslaught of merciless common sense and mockery: Important: Researcher Says that Berenstein Bears, Franklin the Friendly Turtle
Perpetuate "Racist," "Socially Dominant Norms" to Children from Ace of Spades HQ.

What is it about the modern campus culture that tolerates such obsessive seeking of racism where it does not exist and proclamation of major findings unsupported by logic or empirical evidence. Would one be cruel for assuming that the authors happened to take a literature course in magical realism and adopted that style for their scientific publications?

From the abstract

Young children’s media regularly features animals as its central characters. Potentially reflecting children’s well-documented affinity for/with animals, this media—books, toys, songs, clothing, electronic media, and so on—carries with it many explicit and implicit messages about animals and human-animal relationships. This article focuses on the particularly foundational age of children under four and their parents/caregivers as children’s first early childhood environmental educators. Drawing on ecofeminism, ecocriticism, and early childhood environmental education, we explore messages about animals in children’s media, critically considering notions of mis- and dis-placement, anthropomorphism, and subjectivity. Our inquiry challenges parents and environmental educators to reconsider the lessons young children learn about animals from their surrounding media and explore possible alternatives that question and seek to transform social and ecological inequalities.

You really can't make this up. In any fictional account, this would be so heavy handed as to be deemed unbelievable.

Under the heading of blindingly obvious - we need a study to tell us this?

Even in situations where babies are in childcare from a young age, parents are incredibly influential “teachers” to their children, and the home is a primary source of learning.

NSS

As you dig deeper into the deeply self-absorbed paper (there is no data other than a series of nuggets of home life from either of the two authors), you get the sense that sometimes comes from watching the TV program, Cops - intriguing, enjoyable to mock the incredible stupidity of some of the criminals, but also deeply saddening to see people trapped in the lives they have wrought for themselves.

Animals are extraordinarily anthropomorphized in young children’s media. It is common to see depictions of animals standing upright on two legs, wearing human clothing, inhabiting human homes, reflecting social class structures, gender identities, heterosexual norms, living in nuclear families, and sharing aspects of human physical form. In this way, much of young children’s media reproduces and confirms racist, colonial, consumerist, heteronormative, and patriarchal norms

You can only begin to picture the rollicking bedtime reading in the Timmerman and Ostertag households.

This is shooting fish in a barrel. The only reason I linked to this is to share the accompanying picture created by Ace of Spades of the type of children's book that might be found in the Timmerman & Ostertag collection of approved books. Enjoy reading with your children!