Children's Stories

I just had a thought about something I've never seen discussed anywhere.

Why are children's stories so often about talking animals, friendly animals, animals helping people, stories that make wild animals less threatening? It seems like traditional stories children are told growing up in olden days would be the opposite -- stories about how cute and furry wild animals that look so friendly will actually rip your face off given half a chance.

I've seen it discussed.
What I haven't seen discussed, is why does every child in children's stories, and in most stories and books in general, never have a mother? And if there is a father, he's always blind to the child's/children's plight.
This bothered me a lot as a child, and I find it continues to annoy me.

I always found children's stories more sinister than that. Perhaps you need to read the original versions and not the Disney-fied ones. Little Red Riding Hood, for example was given bad directions by the wolf and ends up eaten. The Little Mermaid does not get her prince, Sleeping Beauty finds herself raped and the mother of 2 when she wakes, in the 1800's version Goldilocks gets ripped up and eaten by the bears, in Snow White she awakens not with a kiss but as the cart carrying her back to the prince jostles- leaving us to wonder what the Prince was gonna do with the dead body to start with, never mind the fact that Snow is about 8 years old in the tale, Rapunzel gets her hair chopped off and sent away to live as a beggar with her child.

So um, what stories were about friendly animals that you were wondering about?

And don't even get me started with the Little Match Girl.

That one sucked too.