Why are all the moms gone?

I’d been looking to my childhood favorites and hoping to find myself there, only to realize that in many, the parents were missing, or long dead. There’s a reason for this — adult stories are so all-encompassing, and adults so powerful in children’s lives, that removing the parents gives children their own space to be strong. Other times, it allows a secondary character to act ‘in loco parentis’ — often with magic cloaks and pumpkins that transform into carriages.