After other children’s shows took the lead in representing families with same-sex parents, the venerable Sesame Street is finally showing viewers a bigger picture of what families look like today.
Last June, in the episode “Father’s Day,” the “Elmo’s World” segment explored what the holiday is about and showed a boy with two dads as the narrator says, “You might have a stepdad, or even two dads.”
And last August, in the episode “Hello Rudy,” Muppet character Abby Cadabby gets a new stepbrother when her mom remarries a man (well, a male Muppet monster) who has a son named Rudy. The “Letter of the Day” for the episode is “F,” for family, and a later segment shows real human children introducing us to their families. “I love my moms,” says one child, just before getting kissed by both of them. The family is shown kissing one more time at the end of the segment. The “F Is for Family” segment re-aired in “Our Family’s Way,” another episode about families this January—one that emphasized that different families do things differently.
These quick and quiet depictions may seem to pale next to moves such as that of Disney Junior show Doc McStuffins, which prominently featured a two-mom family in the storyline of an episode last August and garnered a lot of publicity for it. Nevertheless, Sesame Street is the venerable elder of preschool programming, so their actions still carry significant weight. Additionally, they seem to be keeping up the representation over multiple episodes.
As part of the first generation that grew up with Sesame Street (I was two when it launched), I have a deep and abiding love for the show—and have written once or twice (okay, three or four times) over the past 12 years about why it should include LGBTQ characters and families to maintain its position as a leader in promoting diversity and understanding. Given that Sesame Street had been in the forefront of showing different family types with its 2006 storyline about street resident Gina the Veterinarian, a single woman, adopting a child, depicting families with same-sex parents feels like a move that should have happened long ago. (A 1982 segment in which two children sing, “I have one daddy . . . I have two” leaves it unclear whether they were referring to a child with gay dads or, given the era, a child with a straight dad and stepdad.)
Better late than never, though. The new segments are a big step in the right direction (as was last June’s Pride Month message in the show’s social media feeds). And few shows are better than Sesame Street in addressing the broader concepts that love makes a family and all families are different. I’d still like to see a family with LGBTQ parents move onto Sesame Street—and even to have a genderqueer or transgender Muppet join Abby and Elmo and their friends. Explaining what it means to be transgender or genderqueer, in a way geared towards the preschool audience, seems like something Sesame Street could do very, very well if it put its collective mind to it. And what about a Pride March on the Street in June?
Despite a 2015 move to HBO (with episodes still airing on PBS several months later) that had many questioning the direction of the show, perhaps the deal has given Sesame Street the financial security to include content that some might see as controversial, such as same-sex parents.
I encourage all of you to let Sesame Workshop know what it means to you and your children to have LGBTQ representation (and other types of inclusion) on the show. Thank them for depicting two-mom and two-dad families, and let them know what other family types and individuals you’d like to see.
Sunny days indeed.