Why Contemporary Children and Adults Like Fairytales

Abstract

The paper is based on field research on parents’ opinions and attitudes toward fairytales. The research was conducted in 2012, using a specially prepared questionnaire. The sample consisted of rural and urban parents of both sexes in Jagodina and Levca county. The paper represents an analysis of the opinions of parents on the pedagogical and psychological importance of the fairytale as a genre of folklore. The results show who tells fairytales to children today, and which traditional fairytales are favored by contemporary children and their parents. Empirical data provides us with a reliable answer to the question of what contemporary parents in Serbia think about whether “brutal” or “bloody” fairytales are harmful to children or not. The discovery of what parents think about why children like fairytales and what they can learn from the fantastic stories is especially important.