Does Disney Have Mommy Issues?

Aisha Sultan at STLToday.com posted an interesting question that I never thought about until now. Where are the mothers in Disney movies?

My Disney discomfort hatched with an innocent question from my daughter, then 3 years old: "Where is Belle's mommy?"

The princess who loves to read seemed to be raised by a single, dotty father. No explanations for her missing mom. And she's far from the only motherless Disney character. Parental abandonment runs like a river through the original fairy tales from which Disney characters were drawn, and the theme continues to the most recent blockbusters. Snow White's mother dies in childbirth or soon thereafter. Ariel the Mermaid's mother never makes an appearance, and Jasmine's departed one gets fleeting mention. Pocahontas is on her own. And we all know about Cinderella's stepmom issues.

Given the Disney princesses' rock star status among little girls, I started to wonder: What does Disney have against mothers? Many of us can recall the iconic heartbreaking scenes when Bambi's mother is killed or Dumbo's mom is torn away from her baby elephant. Nemo's mom is cruelly eaten by a barracuda.

The theories behind Disney's "matricidal obsession" range from Disney creators devaluing motherhood to crass commercial and emotional exploitation of a sappy formula — that works.

I'm sure she's referring to Disney animated films, which tend to follow the pattern of the old fairy tales. It's something I never really thought about until now. But a lot of sitcoms also follow the pattern of "Where's Mommy?" in their main plot lines, if only to make the father seem clueless on child care for awhile.

"Historically, there's a good reason why in traditional fairy tales there aren't any mothers," says Jack Zipes, author of "Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre." At the times when many ancient fairy tales originated, mothers frequently died young or in childbirth.

But that doesn't explain the continuing popularity of Disney's dead/absent mommies and the plethora of modern single dads in the movies. The lack of a nurturing mother figure is even more pronounced when considering the prevalence of scary older women — the Sea Witch in "The Little Mermaid," Cruella De Vil in "101 Dalmatians," the stepmother and witch in "Snow White," the jealous witch who curses Sleeping Beauty and the stepmother in "Cinderella."

I'm sure that's the reasoning in the older fairy tales, but what about now? Mortality rate for women in childbirth is higher now than in the past. Is it because it is seen as more tragic if the mother dies or is missing than if the father were to pass away? Is it some sort of reverse feminism -- if dad dies, no big deal, but if mom were to die, it's a "big event."

To be fair, though, stories like "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast" are set in a time when the mortality rate was higher, so it's logical to have a mother who is no longer with the family. But I think Disney should probably look at how they are doing this and decide whether they want to continue on this path.