Have you noticed that Disney characters, particularly Disney princesses don't have moms? Their moms have gone missing, or unaccounted for, or maybe dead. Well, Ariel didn't have a mom.

Snowhite's mom is dead, Cinderella didn't have either, they only have evil step moms which don't count and fairy godmothers, while the current characters like Tiana and Merida did have moms, Frozen went back around, with Anna and Elsa's mom dying at the start of the film, but their dad died too.

Don Hahn, a legendary producer had a chance to sit down with Glamour, who worked on Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, as executive producer of Angelina Jolie's Maleficent. He said, "I'll give you two stories that are the reasons. I never talk about this, but I will. One reason is practical because the movies are 80 or 90 minutes long, and Disney films are about growing up. They're about that day in your life when you have to accept responsibility. Simba ran away from home but had to come back. In shorthand, it's much quicker to have characters grow up when you bump off their parents. Bambi's mother gets killed, so he has to grow up. Belle only has a father, but he gets lost, so she has to step into that position. It's story shorthand."

He further added, "Walt Disney, in the early 1940s, when he was still living at this house, also bought a house for his mom and dad to move into. He had the studio guys come over and fix the furnace, but when his mom and dad moved in, the furnace leaked and his mother died. The housekeeper came in the next morning and pulled his mother and father out on the front lawn. His father was sick and went to the hospital, but his mother died. He never would talk about it, nobody ever does."

It is not a secret within the Disney family, although sometimes it's a tragedy that is so hard to talk about. The Disney films help viewers to understand man a little bit more, to humanize them.