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Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p2797"

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  • Purhonen, Laura (2022)
    We are living in a more diverse society than ever. Diversity is a broad theme, and this study includes gender and sexual orientation. Through those themes study examines diverse families and relationships. It is important to include diversity to children’s and youth literature because it allows everyone to identify to the characters and have social cohesion to their community. Theoretical background is the earlier studies of children’s and youth literature and literature education, family and relationship studies. Earlier research shows that there is very little diversity in sexual orientation and the discourse about families is predominantly heteronormative nucler family in children’s and youth literature. The aim of this study was to find out what kind of discourses of diversity in families and relationships are in a selected group of children’s and youth literature. The research data consisted of six children’s and youth books which were candidates for Finlandia prize in children’s and youth literature in 2020. There were children’s picture books as well as youth novels. Qualitative method and discourse analysis was used to analyze the material. Illustrations were analyzed as well as text. The research showed six discourses which were influenced by the notion of the gender and sexual orientation. The discourses of diverse families were: 1) heteronormative nuclear family, 2) diverse families, 3) family, illness and death and 4) family’s wealthiness, and the discourses for the diverse relationships were 5) be who you want and 6) heterosexuality is still predominant. This study reaffirms earlier research about diversity of families and relationships by showing that heteronormative nuclear family and heterosexuality is predominant in children’s and youth literature. However, the discourses of diverse families and relationships were varying and shown in most of the books.