There’s a new diverse family on “Sesame Street.”
A new episode of the long-runing children’s program, called “Family Day,” has introduced a family with two gay dads during Pride Month.
Debuting just before Father’s Day, as reported in the Washington Post, the episode shows the “Sesame Street” muppet characters preparing for a celebration. Elmo, Abby Cadabby, and others talk about who will be at the party when human character Nina then says her brother, Dave, is driving over with his family.
Dave and his husband, Frank, soon arrive with their daughter Mia.
In a Facebook post, Alan Muraoka, one of the show’s actors who co-directed the episode, said, “Sesame Street has always been a welcoming place of diversity and inclusion. Love is love, and we are so happy to add this special family to our Sesame family. Happy Pride to all!!!!”
“Sesame Street” has always strived to represent our diverse society from its inception. The very setting of being centered around a street in an urban locale has naturally involved an ongoing introduction of a wide range of characters.
While these initiatives have caused expected controversy over the years, Christy Tirrell-Corbin, executive director of the Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention at the University of Maryland, explains that our destructive biases are learned, and that kids naturally have a more curious open-minded outlook.
“One of the many wonderful things about young children is they are very accepting -- it’s really when they are exposed to attitudes or context where there’s bias that they begin to develop those biases,” said Tirrell-Corbin. And Sesame Street the show has always been “ahead of the curve in terms of modeling diversity in all forms.”
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In their usual creatively approachable way, “Sesame Street” introduced the gay fathers not with some grand dramatic scene, but simply as another family that showed up at the party, as deserving of hugs and hellos as any other family.
As Naomi A. Moland, author of the children’s television history book, "Can Big Bird Fight Terrorism," explains, “[Sesame Street] would say, okay, what do kids need to know? They don’t need to know anything about sex or marriage necessarily or religion. They just need to know there are some families that have two dads.”
And with “Family Day,” Sesame Street has addressed the issue in their usual creative, family-friendly way.
Taking such apparently hot button topics and normalizing them on a famous family show is a definite step forward for the culture, according to Tirrell-Corbin.
“It allows for conversation to happen naturally,” she said. “It opens up the opportunity for a parent to talk to their children about different family types and express support for families of same-sex parents, blended families, single-parent families and biracial families.”
And while Moland admits to goosebumps while watching “Family Day,” she knows there’s still a way to go.
“I think that would come very soon where we might say, 'Oh look, that girl has two dads, just like you have two moms,” said Moland. “It’s just a way of normalizing it.”
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