Lived and imaginary narratives and their place in taking oneself up as a gendered being

Abstract

The relation between the way in which children understand feminist stories and their understanding of everyday life are examined in a feminist poststrucluralist framework. Sex‐role socialisation theory is rejected as inadequate for the purposes of explaining either the sense children make of the stories they hear or how and why children take up their genderedness in the way that they do. Through preschool children's responses to feminist stories and through observations of preschool children's play, an alternative explanatory framework is elaborated. At the same time the relation between lived and imaginary narratives is explored.