Are We Teaching Girls They’re Not Enough? Or Are We Teaching Them to Look for Problems Everywhere?

I came across a post this week that stopped me mid-scroll.

It was from a mum reading a children’s school book with her daughter. The kind of simple, illustrated story most of us probably grew up with. Animals talking, a race, a few predictable characters, a moral at the end.

Nothing controversial on the surface.

But as she read it, she started to notice something that made her increasingly uncomfortable. The horse, a male character, described himself as fast and strong. The dog, another male character, described himself as the smartest animal on the farm. The goose, the female character, was described by the others as short, fat, silly, soft and quiet.

The boys were confident. The girl was mocked.

The goose does eventually win the race, but the mum felt the message underneath it all was troubling. Her point was that the female character had to prove herself in order to stop being insulted. Simply existing as she was did not seem to be enough.

Her frustration was clear.

And judging by the comments under the post, a lot of people agreed with her.

But I sat there reading it, and if I’m honest, my reaction was completely different.

And that’s what made me pause.

Because it made me ask a bigger question.

Are we uncovering important problems in society that have been hidden in plain sight for years? Or are we starting to look for them everywhere, even where they might not exist?

With International Women’s Day approaching on March 8th, it feels like an interesting moment to ask that question.

My first reaction

When I looked at the pages she had shared, my brain didn’t immediately jump to gender politics.

I saw a fairly classic children’s story.

Two confident characters mocking someone they think is weaker. The quieter character ignoring them. And then quietly winning.

It reminded me of countless stories most of us grew up with. The tortoise and the hare. The ugly duckling. The underdog narrative that appears in almost every culture.

Someone is underestimated. Someone is dismissed. And then they prove everyone wrong.

The lesson isn’t that the insults are true.

The lesson is that the people making the insults are wrong.

In fact, if anything, the story seemed to be teaching children something quite healthy. That confidence doesn’t always equal competence. That arrogance can be misplaced. That the quietest person in the room may be the one who has the best plan.

A pretty decent life lesson, if you ask me.

But clearly the mum reading the book saw something else entirely.

And that difference in interpretation is fascinating.

The lens we read things through

One of the interesting things about parenting in 2026 is that we’re raising children in an era where messaging matters more than ever.

Parents today are far more aware of things like unconscious bias, representation, gender stereotypes and social conditioning. Those conversations simply weren’t happening in the same way when most of us were children.

When I was growing up, we read stories and absorbed them without much analysis. The focus was usually on the obvious moral of the story.

Be kind. Don’t judge people. Slow and steady wins the race.

We weren’t sitting there examining whether the horse represented patriarchal power structures.

But parenting has changed.

Today many parents feel a responsibility to examine the media their children consume much more closely. Books, TV shows, YouTube videos, social media, school resources. Everything is scrutinised through a more critical lens.

And in many ways that’s a positive thing.

We know far more now about the impact messaging can have on children’s developing identities. We understand how stereotypes can subtly shape expectations over time.

So questioning things isn’t a bad instinct.

But the interesting challenge is knowing where thoughtful analysis ends and over-analysis begins.

Because the more closely you look for patterns, the more patterns you will inevitably find.

The problem with looking too hard

There’s something that psychologists call the “frequency illusion”. It’s also known as the Baader-Meinhof effect.

Once you notice something, you start seeing it everywhere.

Buy a red car and suddenly every second car on the road looks red.

Start paying attention to gender bias, and suddenly it appears in books, adverts, films, toys, language and everyday conversations.

Sometimes that’s because the bias really is there.

But sometimes it’s because once our brain starts looking for something, it becomes very good at finding it.

And this is where I found myself wondering whether we are sometimes doing something else entirely without realising it.

Are we unintentionally teaching children to view the world primarily through the lens of conflict?

The unintended consequence

When we frame everything as a potential injustice, children can start to see themselves primarily as victims of systems rather than as individuals with agency.

That might not be the intention.

But it can become the outcome.

One of the things I find fascinating about children is how differently they often interpret stories compared to adults.

Adults analyse.

Children simplify.

Where an adult might see subtle messaging about gender roles, a child might simply see this:

The goose got bullied. The goose ignored them. The goose won.

End of story.

Children are actually quite good at understanding fairness at a basic level. They know when someone is being mean. They know when someone proves others wrong. They know when a character behaves kindly or cruelly.

The moral of the story often lands in exactly the place the author intended.

The problem sometimes arises when adults begin projecting layers of meaning onto something that children themselves might never have interpreted that way.

The bigger context

Of course none of this means gender stereotypes don’t exist.

They absolutely do.

Historically girls have often been described in terms of appearance, while boys have been described in terms of ability. That pattern appears across advertising, literature and media for decades.

Pointing that out is not unreasonable.

But it’s also worth remembering something important.

The goose in the story wins.

Not because she becomes bigger, louder or stronger than the others.

She wins because she thinks differently.

She has a better plan.

And interestingly, that feels like quite a powerful message for girls if you think about it.

You don’t need to be the loudest person in the room.

You don’t need to prove yourself through bravado.

You can simply be observant, strategic and quietly confident in your own abilities.

That’s not a bad lesson for any child.

The irony of modern parenting

One of the things that struck me most in the original post was the exhaustion in the mum’s voice.

She described herself as a knackered mum juggling business and babies. She talked about feeling the weight of the motherhood penalty. She wondered why it was once again falling on her shoulders to call out something she believed was wrong.

And I felt genuine empathy reading that.

Because modern parenting can sometimes feel like a constant battle.

A battle against screen time. A battle against social media. A battle against algorithms, influencers, toxic online spaces and unrealistic expectations.

Parents are trying to raise kind, confident children in an environment that can feel chaotic and overwhelming.

And that’s not easy.

But sometimes I wonder whether we’re also adding another layer of pressure onto ourselves by feeling responsible for identifying every potential social issue hidden within a children’s story.

Because the truth is that children don’t need a perfect world in order to grow into strong, thoughtful adults.

They need guidance.

They need conversations.

They need perspective.

Maybe the conversation is the real win

The most positive part of the story the mum shared wasn’t the book itself.

It was the conversation she had with her daughter.

They talked about appearance.

They talked about empathy.

They talked about how comments can make people feel.

That is exactly what stories are supposed to do.

Books have always been tools for starting conversations between parents and children. Sometimes the most valuable part of a story isn’t the message the author intended.

It’s the discussion that happens afterwards.

If a simple farmyard story about animals can lead to a conversation about kindness and respect, then perhaps the book has already done its job.

International Women’s Day and the bigger picture

With International Women’s Day coming up on March 8th, conversations about gender equality will be everywhere.

And rightly so.

Women have made extraordinary progress in many areas of society over the past few decades. But challenges still remain. The gender pay gap, representation in leadership, the motherhood penalty and the balance between career and family life are all very real issues.

Those are important conversations.

But sometimes I think the most powerful thing we can teach the next generation of girls isn’t that the world is constantly stacked against them.

It’s that they are capable.

Capable of thinking for themselves. Capable of challenging ideas. Capable of proving people wrong when necessary.

And perhaps most importantly, capable of recognising when something is genuinely unfair and when it’s simply part of the messy complexity of life.

Because confidence doesn’t come from being protected from every possible negative message.

Confidence comes from learning how to interpret the world, question it, and navigate it with resilience.

Maybe the goose had it right

In the story, the goose doesn’t spend her energy arguing with the horse or the dog.

She doesn’t try to prove them wrong with words.

She simply carries on.

And then she wins.

There’s something quietly powerful about that.

Sometimes the best response to being underestimated isn’t outrage.

It’s action.

And maybe that’s not such a bad message for young girls to absorb after all.