With reductive stereotypes, fixed gender roles and violent plot points, should fairytales come with warnings for children?

When reading fairytales to children, it is important parents emphasise that some of these stories come from a different era.

That's according to iPaper parenting columnist Genevieve Roberts, who told Newstalk Breakfast some fairytales should not be "presented without context anymore".

Ms Roberts said some of the source material behind these fairytales is quite disturbing.

"In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - if you go back to the original source material - she's a seven-year-old girl," she said.

"There's a lack of consent that runs through fairytales."

Ms Roberts also pointed out how some fairytales have fixed ideas of gender roles.

"So many of them have these really troubling tropes where you see beauty being rewarded with handsome men and women whose absolute aim in life is to fall in love and that’s their happily ever after," Ms Roberts said.

"If you look at the message in fairytales towards women as a whole and the role they play - they are kind of objects in a lot of them."

Supervision

Ms Roberts said her own daughter loves these fairytales, but she wants to have conversations with her about some of their content.

"I do feel like she shouldn’t just watch them and soak up their messages - we need to have a conversation around them," she said. 

Recent Disney retellings such as The Little Mermaid (2023) and Beauty and the Beast (2017) do a "brilliant job" of dispelling some of these stereotypes, according to Ms Roberts.

"They are being very, very conscious and that’s really wonderful to see, but doesn’t that show that they’ve had to kind of move on?" she said.

"The old ones are great - but just give the context."

A woman reads a book to children, Alamy

Ms Roberts is not against restricting children's access to fairytales, but she encourages parents to watch them with their children.

"Sometimes, when I'm really busy, I put something on the telly so I can do something else - I don't think these fulfil that role," she said.

She said there are far "less challenging" films and TV shows that are appropriate for children to watch on their own.