A hopeful Atompunk depiction of the Space Age from the early 1960s complete with revolving space station and a family of astronauts with jetpacks. Now the early 1960s were likely as sexist as America ever got, and very very firmly into gender roles — boy child has a blue spacesuit, and girl child a pink one. In addition girl child has a frou-frou skirt attached to hers, and is lugging a doll dressed in a similar fashion. But… she is present, unlike Mom, who we can assume is whipping up a space-age lunch at home in the space station. This seems to me to say (if a child’s book can say anything) that girls can look forward to adventuring in space in the decades to come, while adult women, still mired in the sex roles of the past, are excluded.
So perhaps it’s not so sexist after all.
