If you’ve listened to fairy tales, or if you’ve watched early classic Disney cartoons, one thing becomes unsettlingly clear: a lot of “poor little” princes and princesses shared a common family tragedy. In an overwhelming number of these stories the mothers were gone, dying long before the child in question could be influenced by them or even remember them. The single dads in these tales almost always had dreadful taste in women the second time around — bringing a whole host of evil stepmothers onto the fairy tale scene.

Sadly, until later in the twentieth century, the chances of children losing their mothers and being raised by stepmothers was common. The overwhelming threat to a woman’s life was childbirth, especially if any sort of infection set in after delivery. For example, John Mi…