Gender roles in fairy tales

Fairy tales have an educational and socialization impact on children. In fairy tales children find answers to questions, problems and situations, that life brings them. Fairy tales reflect true life - people come into the world, fall ill, die, get poorer, steal, get jealous, love and hate to death and they are willing to lay down their life for helping others. A child feels genuineness of story, finds something what it had experienced itself. Children identify themselves with fairy tale characters and their characteristics, heroes of stories are their models. So naturally children create their hierarchy of values, because moral message of fairy tales is clear and that is its advantage for children. Fairy tales interfere in all aspects of life and education. One of the aspects is the area of gender. In my research I presented the children a traditional fairy tale and less traditional fairy tale, where male and female roles are reversed. The aim of the research was to find out how boys and girls perceive the division of roles in fairy tales. I led structured interviews with children and compared the collected data with the gathered theoretical information