Welcome to Family Policy Matters, a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, I'm John Rustin, president of NC Family, and each week on Family Policy Matters, we welcome experts and policy leaders to discuss topics that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our prayer is that this program will help encourage and equip you to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. And now here's the host of Family Policy Matters, Tracy DeVett-Griggs. Welcome to Family Policy Matters.
Stories that families read together are a shared experience, a common thread to pull on for years. In a previous episode, we discussed the importance of reading classic stories with our children.
Well, today we're going to examine what happens when people quote-unquote update those classic tales and what kind of problems. That can create for us all. We've invited Morgan Morin, a contributor to the Institute for Family Studies, to talk about how hurtful the commandeering of our stories can be. Morgan, welcome to Family Policy Matters. Thank you so much, Tracy.
All right, well, start by telling us a little bit about who you are and whether you think that those adolescent and early adult years and the cultural narrative that you embrace have helped you realize how important stories are. My husband, Miles, and I live in Richmond, Virginia. We have a four-year-old daughter, a two-year-old son, and another baby coming in the fall. Congratulations. Thank you.
Before that, I went to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and studied political and social thought. And before that, I attended a classical Christian school, K through 12, which really focused on encountering the best stories and letting them shape and grow us and really letting them change you. I had some really great teachers who made these stories come alive for me, and I'm so grateful for them. I'm also grateful that most of what I read growing up was true and good and beautiful, but I do know the effect that warped stories can have. For example, I read some Anne Rand in late middle school, and that plus other cultural messaging about femininity and womanhood kind of threw me for a little while.
And I firsthand experienced how, as young women, some stories can be stumbling blocks on our path, and some can really be emotional and spiritual guides to growing up. Like for me, Jay Nair, Paralandra, Little Winner. Et cetera, can help us to grow up and embrace beautiful and well-ordered femininity. And around late middle school, I started personally resisting womanhood pretty strongly, physically and mentally, primarily through competitive running and restricted eating, which led to a number of health complications. But anyway, these stories, the good stories, did help to ultimately anchor me and lead me on a journey.
And I wasn't expecting to get married and have children young, but I'm grateful that God interrupted my own plans and set me on a different path than the one I had anticipated. It's been the best thing that could have happened to me. You mentioned that Anne Rand in reading that had a big effect on you. What do we do about that? You know, because you hear people, oh, let's, you know, ban the books and let's get them out of our libraries.
Do we do that or as parents, do we just have to be more aware? I don't think that it's necessarily a good idea to completely censor them and not allow them to be read. I think that at the time I read it and another. Girl my age was reading it as well, and another guy in my grade was also reading it.
So we talked about it, but probably it would have been good to have an adult involved in the reading discussion of it. Probably for those books that are a little bit on the more mature or sensitive side, it would have been a good idea to, yeah, have someone who had a little bit more wisdom and perspective come to the discussion with us. But what about in schools that the parents wouldn't necessarily appreciate the input some of those adults might give?
Well, then maybe that's the role of the parents to do that then, to read the book alongside their child and talk about it with them. Just like ask them questions about it. That's one thing I think, especially about some of these newer Disney movies. I think that a lot of them, the messages they send are not ideal for young kids who don't come to them with a critical eye and who don't have that ability to kind of step back and evaluate. My husband and I recently watched a number of them together, and it was really interesting coming to them as an adult because you can like, you can see what the movie makers are doing.
And you can see what they are trying to pass on, what are they trying to say? Whereas when you're a child, you just take it in. And so, we personally haven't let our daughter watch any of those yet. And when she's a little older, we'll watch them with her and talk about them. But I think that delaying the exposure to that kind of thing is probably a good idea.
And then to be able to have a conversation about it is also wise. Can you give us an example of a movie that you watched and some of the themes that you saw that the producers were pushing? In the 2025 live action Snow White, that was one that stood out to me because we've read the older Grimm's version of Snow White and it has been wonderful. And also another updated version of Snow White that has been wonderful. But the 2025 live action felt like a story of female empowerment rather than female maturation.
And the narrative of empowerment really says that women are already heroines, but are held back by society. And the older Snow White that we know and love, not necessarily the movie, but some elements of the older movie, but the older fairy tale was more of a coming-of-age story than it. Empowerment story. Snow White had to grow up and move past some bad fortunes, some character flaws to eventually arrive at womanhood and be united to the prince. And in the new version, I was just impressed by the fact that Snow White was more like a mother to the unruly dwarves who couldn't keep their house neat or keep out of arguments with each other.
They're kind of pathetic and she's angelic, but the older tale is more complex, with the dwarves protecting and guarding Snow White as she transitions from girlhood into womanhood. And the dwarves aren't mature men or wholly admirable. They have plenty of their own flaws, but they do rescue Snow White multiple times when she falls for the temptations of her evil stepmother. And in the old story, her time with the dwarves is a time of trial and preparation for love and marriage and full adulthood. But the new story, it's not as much a time of preparation as showing that she's already arrived, she's already the leader and the counselor.
And then she's portrayed at the end as the savior of her kingdom. And the old story doesn't place Snow White in the savior role, but it focuses more on her union with the prince, which then dispels the Evil from the kingdom and brings back the good. But I think in these new stories of empowerment, we're really telling young girls that they are the heroines, that we are the heroines, and that life is about fulfilling our own personal destiny. You need to do something big, save the world. And I think that this sounds, it may sound empowering and exciting on the surface, but I think it's actually a very heavy burden and one that most of us aren't called to.
And I think instead of that, we should be passing on the important message that growing up to maturity is hard, but beautiful and worthwhile. And I think it's just discouraging to have this narrative of empowerment. It's either discouraging as you try to become a mature woman, or you can become stuck in perpetual adolescence because you keep thinking everything is about yourself and your personal destiny. And I don't say this to be disparaging, but really more because I fell for this myself for a while. And it was pretty crushing and anxiety producing.
And becoming a wife and a mother has been very healing for me in this way. I'm sure you know that the suicide rate among young people spiked. I mean, it's starting to come back down now, but people blamed it on COVID or they blamed it on social media, but we don't know.
So you do kind of wonder if some of the narratives that they're getting from TV and movies is having that kind of an effect.
So that's very interesting.
So what you're suggesting requires adults to be very thoughtful. What advice do you have for parents, grandparents, adults who are shepherding these children? It totally is more work. And I guess I would say delaying watching a lot of these things is probably the best and focusing on the really good things that have been vetted throughout time. And I think it's good to approach movies or books or stories with a questioning of them.
You know, is this something that is worthwhile? Charlotte Mason talks about whether a book in particular is a living book or twaddle. And I think what she means is that living books are beautifully written and inspiring, while Twaddle Books are kind of dumbed down, poorly written, and shallow. And so I think trying to choose those ones that are beautifully written and illustrated, enchanting, thought-provoking, so that you can be filled and your kids can be filled with the best of what's out there. I don't think it's always a question of whether something is okay, but are we choosing the best?
And if not, why not? Why aren't we choosing the best? Because there's plenty of it out there. You have said that fairy tales can play an important part in civilization. What have you meant by that sentiment?
I think you may be quoting something I wrote in a recent article where I say that Jonathan Peugeot, he said, fairy tales can be tuning forks for civilization. And I think what he means is that the stories that we repeatedly share embed themselves within us subconsciously. And these symbols and patterns, they affect the way we think and the choices we make without us even needing to realize that they're doing so. There's a C.S. Lewis essay titled, Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said.
And he claims that good stories can steal past the watchful dragons. And what he means is that a story can go past the intellectual and analytical mind and directly affect the heart. And this is especially true for kids who aren't coming to stories with a critical mind. And so I think we need to be aware that stories do that to us. And so they really do have the power to shape civilization because they can bypass the conscious mind and go straight to the heart.
Yeah, a couple months ago, my mom took our four-year-old daughter to a classical ballet performance of Sleeping Beauty. And ever since that performance, our daughter has been reenacting the story, assigning all of us characters. And we've just been able to tell that the Princess Aurora, the evil fairy Kerabas, the good lilac fairy are just like reverberating in her at all times. And so stories do that. They grip us.
And good stories can tune us correctly to the world. And warped stories can misattune us and kind of put us out of touch with reality without us even realizing it.
Okay, let's talk about boys because so far we've mostly been talking about girls and the effect that it can have on them. But these stories can have an effect on boys as well, especially in a culture that a lot of people feel has minimized the impact that boys can have or men can have in our culture. Culture.
Some of the modern retellings of fairy tales have completely eliminated the prince. In the original Rapunzel, there is a prince, but there's not in Disney's Tangled. And instead, Rapunzel falls in love with an outlaw who helps her on her journey. And they do get married in the end, but Rapunzel in this version is the princess. And the outlaw enters into her kingdom after she has found her identity as the lost princess.
Whereas in the original story, Rapunzel was the daughter of commoners who married a prince. And so there's just, it's just kind of twisting the character of the prince a little bit. And also in Snow White, as I mentioned, there's no prince. The character who would be the prince, the love interest of Snow White, he is now an outlaw.
So we've got a bandit and an outlaw instead of a prince. And I just think, huh, what is this doing to boys? You know, it's taking away any kind of masculine heroism and pushing that to the sideline. And then in Moana, which is based on Polynesian mythology, there is no prince at all. And there's not even any kind of love interest at all.
But I think. Is one problem with it as well. It kind of shows this independent woman who doesn't need a man. Her father loves her, but kind of pulls her back from her calling. And the demigod Maui, who does join her on her quest, is portrayed as insecure and arrogant.
And he deserts the quest when it gets dangerous.
So he's not a hero. And I think that this communicates to young girls that boys are maybe at best love interests or assistants, and at worst, kind of get in the way of their potential. And I think that young men were once encouraged more to become leaders and protectors and providers, and women were encouraged to appreciate this and value this in men. But I think cutting out the prince makes men look like kind of optional add-ons and somewhat irrelevant. And I think that lie is very demoralizing to boys and men and confusing to women because now these men think, well, what am I supposed to do?
And these women, I think, probably ultimately. Know that men play a vital and irreplaceable role, but get confused about what that role is. North Carolina Family Policy Council is a policy organization, and we are quite often talking about the marriage rate, which is low. The birth rate is like record low. We're not even at replacement level anymore.
Do you feel like some of this retelling of stories and the way that our cultural narrative is talking about couples contributes to this? I think it does. I think I wouldn't underestimate the power of stories to affect something as tangible as that. The messaging in these retellings shows love and marriage and family as kind of optional add-ons you can choose to pursue once you fulfill your own dreams or destiny, instead of showing marriage and family as like the rock or the foundation on which to build the rest of your life. And I think this leads women to postpone and delay marriage and then causes a whole host of issues because when marriage is postponed and delayed, well, a lot of women really do want to get married and have kids someday, but postponing it until you follow your dreams or fully establish yourself in a career can make it harder to find a man to marry.
It can make it harder to get pregnant and harder to readjust your whole life if you do get married and have children.
So it's all a little bit backwards. I think women would be a lot happier and better off if they were counseled and encouraged to get married and start a family first. And then after having that solid foundation, pursue their interests and dreams and their dreams as a family that they develop. I think sadly, The whole timeline has gotten kind of flipped for women. And I am grateful I didn't intend it this way.
God just kind of reordered my path this way. I'm grateful that I got the opportunity to get married and have kids on the younger side. And then from there, Lord willing, life is pretty long, and there's more time to do lots of other things in your life. All right, sounds great. Morgan Morin, thank you for your good work and your very interesting perspective, and for joining us today on family policy matters.
Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy.
Thanks and may God bless you and your family.
