[barry-cotter]

> Important point many are missing: Folktales were not originally for children. They were told among adults after children had gone to sleep.

Do you have any evidence for this? Nothing I’ve ever read in anthropology supports it. When most children die before their fifth birthday, the average family lives in one room and a family is rich if they have two beds, a table and six good chairs people think very differently than the fabulously wealthy Victorians. And they were pretty much ok with children working in factories or as chimney sweeps.

Life used to be nasty, brutish and short. Attitudes were substantially less delicate as a result.

[watwut]

1.) One bit of context is that German propaganda during WWI did not allowed death at all in children books. This is something I have from book about occupied territory.

2.) The other is that "folk" likely did not told stories to kids every evening the way we do. This I gather as unprobable after reading book about childhood in Germany before wars. The kids did not get as much individual attention and general attention.

Demographic that was ok with kids working in factories had both parents working 12 hours a day with no weekend. These had 5 years old whole day alone on the streets or "responsible" for gooses with no adult present. There was no one to gently tuck them to bed and tell them story so that they learn "morals" or what. These were overworked adults desperately needing a bit of rest for themselves.

Your kids are not getting bedtime stories at all in that situation.

3.) My observation from kids: We push stories and reading on kids a lot and very soon. Sooner then they actually like it. Small kids like shorter super simple stories. The original form is not for kids not just because it is dark, but also because it is unnecessary long and slow moving for such kid.

[barry-cotter]

Your “we” is likely unrepresentative even now. Reading or telling stories to children every night is not a universal pastime. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s below 50% though it’s quite common.

Children got less attention because there were more of them and people were busy but they weren’t feral. When it’s dark and cold outside they were mostly inside. There’s always work but if you spend a lot of time in cramped quarters with no tv, radio or books people’s people want entertainment apart from gossip. That means music, song or story telling. You’re not going to get a five year old to sit still for half an hour to listen to a recitation of a book of the Iliad or Odyssey but ten minutes is an unremarkable attention span.

Total agreement on reading. Be like Finland, leave it til primary school, which starts at 7 years old.

[watwut]

> Your “we” is likely unrepresentative even now. Reading or telling stories to children every night is not a universal pastime.

I meant we as a society. Not everyone does it, but it is general recommendation. It was not even recommendation back then. The point is, we as society are collectively doing it a lot more. We as a society also push parents to do it a lot more. In 19 century, you would not had people claiming that someone must read to babies every night - although you do see people and even educators pushing this one.

> Children got less attention because there were more of them and people were busy but they weren’t feral

The origin of kindergarten are German cities with poor kids in city running around whole day. Middle class kids lives were highly controlled, including a lot of control over their entertainment, hobbies and so on. But poor families could not afford any of that.

In rural villages, even my grandmother remembered being responsible for gooses along other kids while adults worked fields (they were comparatively rich family with rather larger farm). It was the normal way of raising kids even in 20 century.

> People want entertainment apart from gossip. That means music, song or story telling

Yes, but these are songs and story telling for adults. The kids can listen, but the original claim is that these stories were aimed at adult audience. Which is true. The fun things for children and for adults are much different. And the original stories when I read them while ago tended to be much longer then what I read to small kids. As kids grow they start to have preference for older and 10 years old will like long version. But 4-5 years old less likely.

[goto11]

See for example Decameron - upper class adults telling stories (many of them folktales) to each other for entertainment. No kids in sight. It was a widespread tradition before mass media, among rich and poor. It was the Victorians who turned the folktales into children's literature. (And I think you are mixing a few things up about the child factory workers and chimney sweeps - these were the urban poor after industrialization. Grimm had to go to the countryside to record the folktales because the tradition was lost in industrialized urban society.)

> Life used to be nasty, brutish and short. Attitudes were substantially less delicate as a result.

I don't think you can draw a simple correspondence between brutality in real life and brutality in fiction. For example there is a lot more explicit violence in TV today than 50 years ago, even though by all account there is less violent crime in western society overall. And it is not like Grimms Cinderella is exceedingly brutal compared to say Saw or Game of Thrones. On the other hand we don't consider public executions appropriate entertainment for the whole family anymore.