Characters in children’s books typically work in higher-paid, male-dominated professions.

It’s easy to spot a recent father. Instead of standing still, they’ll gently bob up and down, their body accustomed to soothing a newborn by bouncing. They’ll have the inevitable bags under their eyes and will occasionally use silly words like “leggies”. Their WhatsApp will show they were last online at 04:32am, or something similarly yawn-inducing. They’ll wear shoes which can be slipped on and start asking if you’ve ever experienced back pain. They’ll suggest 9am “brunch” in lieu of an evening pint. The readers amongst them will suddenly have views on nature/nurture and the science of breast milk. The TV watchers will be considering writing a dissertation on the traits of scandi noir detective protagonists.

They’ll also suddenly be familiar with the works of Julia Donaldson and Eric Carle. To the uninitiated – they are the respective authors of the Gruffalo and the Hungry Caterpillar, two classic children’s books. Children’s books are more than just a story. They form part of a routine, which gives baby’s lives a bit of structure. Repeating a process daily gives them a familiar environment in which they can establish and practice new skills – the first instruction my child understood was “turn the page”.

But the story is important, too. Children subtly absorb words and concepts, something parents realise when children mimic their quirks (in my case an unshakable tendency to sigh a drawn-out “oh dear” when modestly bothered). And they inevitably shape children’s perspective of the world. Two-year olds are excited by fire-engines because they’ve read so much about them. Recycling-trucks prompt less enthusiasm.

I was struck by the selectivity of jobs covered in my child’s books. They tend to feature people that visibly “turn-up and save they day” – doctors, fire-officers, police, pilots, judges – that sort of thing. Hidden are those which enable society to function: carers, shop assistants, factory workers and cleaners. Fearing that this just reflected a biased-bookshelf in my own home, I downloaded a dataset of words from 160 popular children’s books – helpfully made avaliable by the authors of an academic study here: https://osf.io/zta29/.

I then (manually!) identified all the jobs in those books I could, before tallying how many books each job featured in. Doctor was the most common – appearing in 14 of the 160 books. I then identified each of these jobs in an ONS dataset which shows the median wage for different professions. The chart below plots two salary distributions. The first is jobs which appear in children’s books, the second is jobs in the general economy. You’ll note the stark difference. Children’s books tend to feature high-earning, male dominated jobs.

Thats unsurprising, as these jobs make for more stereotypically “exciting” narratives. In some senses, this is good for the labour market. It may help set kids’ aspirations, encouraging them to later undertake STEM subjects, for example. But it has problematic implications, too. As a society we undervalue jobs like caring, and children’s literature reinforces that. These jobs will too be crucial for our aging-society to function. If nobody wants to do them, all those new STEM-graduates will be too busy caring for their parents to be saving-the-day.