Are Fairytales Bad For Our Children?

We have all been told the stories of how Jack climbed the beanstalk and found an unexpected giant or how the Three Little Pigs escaped the Wolf. From a young age we have been taught that these stories have moral values that are to be followed and never questionedBut is it right to teach our youth that we should accept the decisions of people without questioning their intentions or morals? What if there are hidden negatives in the stories that we read to our children, that if focused on, could have been the reason they wouldn’t have been heard again? For instance the fact that we are raising our children to believe that life will be as perfect as the characters’, or that beautiful people get it better, and even the little negative details of stories that we do not notice. These are not positive opinions that we should be putting in our children’s minds.

Fairytales are basically stories that we tell our children to amuse them and stretch their imaginations, but unless we specifically tell them, they are unaware that these stories are not reality. No girl really meets her prince that easily and certainly nobody magically awakens from a coma to find that their life is perfect. To us, this seems ridiculous, but to a five year old, they do not know what reality is, and for all they know, that’s it.

Every story has it’s moral message. Beauty and the Beast tells us that beauty is within, Pinnochio teaches us to live honestly. That is the primary point of us as children hearing them: to learn lessons that we should live by. But nobody seems to remember that Cinderella doesn’t stand up for herself, or that Ariel gave away her voice in return for legs, so the prince has to fall in love with her without hearing her speak. The messages that are under the surface should not be taken so lightly.

As humans, we believe what we are brought up to believe. Our virtues are based on what our parents or gaurdians wish us to think. By reading our children these fictional stories, the morals that are meant to be focused on may be overshadowed by the negative messages that they are sending.