By: Grace MacPherson
The summer I was sixteen, my family went on a road trip to Wisconsin. As the oldest of seven (at that time ranging in age from nine months to fourteen years old), long car rides can be trying ordeals. And on this particular trip, searching for a hotel late one night, I began telling my siblings fairy tales.
For some reason, the one I settled on was Rumpelstiltskin. This has never been my favorite fairy tale — the whole ordeal with the straw just goes on and on, and Rumpelstiltskin’s motivation always baffled me. Sure, babies are wonderful, but would a villain think so? And what would a villain do with a baby anyway?
Trying to figure that out, I wrote my first (and last) misunderstood antagonist story, starring Rumpelstiltskin as the desperately lonely main character who just wanted a friend. That seemed to be explanation enough for Rumpelstiltskin — until I realized that Rapunzel also features a villain who wants a baby more than anything else. Given that, in most versions of the story, the witch is the next-door neighbor of Rapunzel’s parents, loneliness didn’t seem to be a sufficient motive. I attempted a retelling of Rapunzel as well, but that never got past the outline. It’s not easy to write a story when you have no idea why your villain is doing what she is!
But more recently, I’ve come to understand these fairy tales in a very different light. As part of a large family, I’ve always seen babies as a blessing, but I’ve also seen firsthand the colicky newborns and tantrumming toddlers. Parenthood is a gift, yes, but it’s also a tremendous sacrifice. Parents are constantly putting aside their own desires and needs to serve their children.
While it’s certainly true that parenthood requires hard work and sacrifice, that’s also a very recent emphasis. As C. S. Lewis wrote in his introduction to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, “Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”
Fairy tales can certainly be considered old — Rapunzel is at least four hundred years old, while one article online1 puts the first version of Rumpelstiltskin at over four thousand years old. Stories this old have a unique ability to challenge our assumptions today — including assumptions that even we prolife Lutherans don’t recognize.
While everyone today, prolife or not, would agree that parenthood is a challenge, Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin view that challenge as secondary to the blessings that children bring — such great blessings that a child is the greatest treasure a villain can hope to win.
This deep value of children is echoed in the fairy tales Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, both of which begin with a mother unable to have a baby, and even more emphatically in the lesser-known fairy tales Tom Thumb and Thumbelina. While the characters Tom Thumb and Thumbelina are both born only the size of their parents’ thumbs, they are still treasured and loved by their parents who are grateful to have a child whether that child is considered “healthy” or “normal” by the rest of the world.
Again, parenthood — especially of a special-needs child — comes with abundant challenges. But both in Scripture and in fairy tales, those challenges are viewed as secondary to the great gift of children. We shouldn’t be surprised when fairy-tale villains want a baby — that surprise is a reflection of our own culture’s view of children as troublesome and unnecessary.
Of course, we can’t escape our culture all together. We may not be of this world, but we are still in it, and it’s impossible not to share certain viewpoints of our culture.
But as C. S. Lewis wrote, it’s wise and healthy to check your own assumptions by reading older books. And when it comes to prolife issues, fairy tales offer a beautiful reminder of the precious gift of every human life, a gift that outweighs even the many challenges of parenthood.
Grace MacPherson is a member of the historical first class at Luther Classical College, opening in in Casper, Wyoming in Fall 2025. She is also the author of the Christian fantasy novels The King’s Sword (middle-grade) and Domitian (young adult). You can read more about her at authorgracemacpherson.com.