Nursery Rhyme and Reason
Each night after kids brush their teeth and settle under the covers, parents have a great opportunity to read them a few bedtime stories. We loving rereading the time honored tales that, by now, we all know by heart. Do you know the one about the boy who robs a man then kills him? How about the one where the woman can’t be happy until a man comes along? I know a few where the characters settle disputes by killing each other. You know the stories I mean. They’re probably on your kids’ shelves right now. Show me a fairytale and I’ll show you a dysfunctional family unit producing a deviant juvenile. The ironic part is that we love these stories. We grew up with them and passed them on to our kids and grandkids. Yet not so far beneath the surface of these cheery nursery rhymes are some pretty undesirable themes
Take for example “Jack and the Beanstalk.” How we cheered when Jack felled the beanstalk and made a better life for his impoverished family. But permit me to recap the tale with a new perspective. Jack lives in a single parent home where he’s unsupervised enough to go scurrying up whatever might spring up in the backyard whenever he feels like it. When he finds a new house, he breaks in and steals money, livestock, and instruments. To make matters worse, when the homeowner decides he doesn’t like this delinquent looting his home every day, the brave little Jack murders him. When looked at this way, the moral of the story would appear to be: When someone you’ve repeatedly burglarized objects to being robbed, it is permissible to kill them. Sweet dreams kids.
But all children’s stories can’t be so sordid, right? Surely those sweet princesses in their magical kingdoms are worthy of our children’s admiration. Remember Cinderella? Snow White? Both sat at home washing the floors wishing a man would come along and give them a better life. Then one did. Bravo girls! You’ve inspired another generation of young girls to feel inadequate without a mate. And they’re not pillars of virtue to begin with. Cinderella lies to get a boy to like her, Snow White talks to strangers, and don’t even get me started about Rapunzel sneaking boys in her bedroom window. It doesn’t help that none of them has a decent mother figure around either. Traditionally, fairytale mothers must die and be replaced by evil stepmothers. What a wonderful way to teach young people to dislike their parents’ new spouses. Cinderella’s example gives them perhaps the best advice: Your step-mom doesn’t love you so sneak out and go to a party. And you don’t even have to make it back by curfew!
And then there are the eye-for-an-eye stories: those glowing little endorsements of capital punishment that we send Junior off to dreamland with. The Big Bad Wolf killed Granny, he must die. The witch locked up Hansel and Gretel, burn her. A troll won’t let you cross the bridge, throw him off it. And nothing’s cheerier than three vigilante pigs boiling a home intruder alive. But how do these glaring violations of our collective morality go unnoticed? Why is the trespassing little Peter Rabbit the hero of the tale? I suppose you could make a case that these stories teach children to overcome adversity. But I suspect there may be better ways to deal with someone eating your porridge besides eating them. I think perhaps we need to take a fresh looks at those not-so-sweet stories on the night stand and reconsider whether some of these themes are as appropriate now as when they were written. Maybe we could screen our bedtime stories a bit more closely and try to tone down the misogyny, murder, and mayhem. And in the mean time, perhaps we should consider shelving Mother Goose in the adult section.