Stereotypes, stepmothers, and splitting.

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.