Why don’t any of the Disney Princesses have a mother?
Belle from Beauty And The Beast lives with her father. Mother’s whereabouts: unknown.
Ariel from The Little Mermaid lives with her sisters and her father. Mother’s whereabouts: unknown.
Jasmine from Aladdin lives with her father. Mother’s whereabouts: unknown.
Snow White lives with her father and evil stepmother. Mother’s whereabouts: dead.
Cinderella lives with her evil stepmother. Mother’s whereabouts: dead, and the dad is too.
Aurora from Sleeping Beauty has a mother and a father, but her mother is hardly in the movie at all. Her father makes all the early decisions about spinning wheel burning, and then she goes off to be raised by fairies in the forest.
I’ve never seen Mulan, but wiki says that she does have a mother and a father, although it is her need to protect and honour her father that drives her to run off and join the army.
Gal Smiley has no interest in Disney Princess stuff, but most of her friends do. Until now I’ve kind of been encouraging her to notice the princess stuff, just so she can know what is going on when she visits a friend. Now I’m thinking, hey, wait a minute…how about some positive mother-daughter relationships for a change, Disney? Is it too much to ask for a nice, kind Mommy every now and again?
Perhaps Disney feels that a strong, positive maternal role model would mean that the Princesses in question would have no need to be strong and fight for themselves? That’s lame, Disney, lame.
I’ll have to give this one some thought.
And while I’m thinking about it, what kids’ movies have you seen that do have a positive mother figure?
TurtleHead 
Interesting observation. I suspect, though, that the missing parent is a simple device for creating the fundamental tension that drives the plot. Why it’s always the mother, though, well maybe that’s for the psychologists to debate.
Mulan’s cool. She’s not a very princess-y Disney character at all. She totally kicks butt. 🙂
Some others:
Finding Nemo: mother is dead (is that Disney or was that Pixar’s first film on their own?)
Bambi: haven’t seen it, but doesn’t the mother die in the end? Is there much of a bond in the rest of the movie?
Best Disney mom BY FAR: The Incredibles.
CapnPlanet – I agree. I think the missing mothers are a required plot point…but I’m still not sure that I like it.
Mary Lynn – I’ll check out Mulan, then!
FameThrowa – It does seem that finding ANY kind of mother in animated films is tough. One I did think of is the mother in The Lion King — not in it as much but she does seem to be caring and supportive. There’s also a good mom in 101 Dalmations.
Andrea — I can’t believe I forgot about Helen Parr! She rocks. My favourite scene in that movie is when her plane blows up with her two older kids aboard, and when they hit the water, she tells them that they will GET A GRIP or else be GROUNDED FOREVER. Awesome.
Wow, that’s a great observation.
I don’t think it’s about trying to suppress a strong female character. I suspect there is a deep-seated fariy-tale archetype going on: The Father-As-Protector/Authority Figure.
The father in many of these movies has the function of being there to hold the heroine character back, giving her something to rebel against (and thus provide some conflict). Mothers on the other hand are typically seen as nurturing and understanding, which doesn’t serve the same dramatic purpose. You can’t very well go running off to fall into the villains hands your mother is smiling and saying “You should follow your heart.”
Disney isn’t exactly known for breaking the cliches.
I’m not as familiar with some of the older movies, but Beauty and the Beast is one of the only films on your list that I can see really breaking that mold: it’s more the town and Gaston who are holding Belle back, her father is kind of bumbling and benign, and serves more as the sidekick-who-gets-rescued. But maybe they didn’t make him a Mother because they were worried about how the early scenes with a mother captured by the Beast would play.
I’ve noticed that the dead and/or missing parent is central to most children’s literature/cinema/TV. I think it gives the hero/heroine the freedom to solve their own problems. Otherwise they’d just go tell their parents and mom would step in and fix everything and that would be boring like real life. It’s exciting for kids because the first thing they usually think of doing is getting their parents to help — But wait! There are no parents…now what? Adventure ensues.
I have some serious issues with the Disney Princesses (I’ve been writing a post about it for a while now) but I never thought about the mother issue. The orphan phenomenon is a popular literary tool in a lot of kids books: everything from Harry Potter to The Little Princess to most Roald Dahl books (where at least one parent is missing if the kid isn’t an out right orphan except when the parents are evil like in Matlida). And I just glanced up and say XUPs comment so I’m going to stop writing instead of reiterating what she said.
As for movies – other than The Incredibles I can’t think of any and that is really sad.
Bea over at “Bub and Pie” (http://bubandpie.blogspot.com/) wrote an interesting post on this ages ago. I should dig it out for you. She teacher childrens lit at a university in Southern Ontario. I tried to find it but I can’t seem to at this moment.
I am not a fan of this dramatic device either. Last week my 3 year old asked me where Max’s parents were (max and ruby). I didn’t really know what to say (but I did think how much I hate that show)