By Stephen Beech

Children's picture books enforce "outdated gender stereotypes" when it comes to coping with pain, according to a new study.

Boys are more likely to experience pain (53%) than girls (29%) in the books studied, but girls were far more likely to cry (78%) when faced with pain than boys (22%).

Researchers from the University of South Australia analyzed hundreds of popular children’s picture books for the study, published in the European Journal of Pain .

They found that pain and injury are depicted in about one in five stories, with the most common experiences being bumps, grazes, or falls.

But the ways in which pain was represented varied "significantly" between boy and girl characters, with old-fashioned stereotypes persisting across storylines.

As well as boys exp

See Full Page