title: Stereotypes, stepmothers, and splitting.
abstract: Asserting that preteen children cannot tolerate ambivalence, a recent study extols the "wicked stepmother" stereotype in fairy tales for providing a safe outlet for child-mother aggression. However, even theories which consider splitting normal in object-relations development see it as operating mostly before age 3. Dualistic thinking is not ubiquitous in childhood, nor is it ever outgrown. Rather, it is a mode of organizing experience mythopoetically; we learn to minimize its intrusions in dealings with day-to-day realities. There is no scientific justification for (and there are moral objections to) the propagation of the wicked stepmother stereotype.
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004532:Ego; D005220:Fathers; D006801:Humans; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers; D009229:Mythology; D009769:Object Attachment; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012801:Sibling Relations; D013240:Stereotyping