For a generation that is being brought up on increasingly violent TV and video games our kids seem to be pretty damn precious... well, at least according to some parents in the United Kingdom.

A study done in the UK recently revealed that a number of parents are refusing to read their kids the classics like Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk because they are just too gosh-darn scary!

Seriously, what the hell? Could you be any more pathetic?   

Their reasoning, amongst others, is that grandma being eaten by the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood is just too gruesome, while Goldilocks promotes stealing, Jack and the Beanstalk is too unrealistic and Snow White and Seven Dwarves is politically incorrect by referring to the Snow White's mates as "dwarves". I am sure then that Snow White and the Seven Little People would probably be acceptable?

Jack and the Beanstalk is unrealistic? No kidding, it’s called a fairy tale for a bloody reason people! You could say the same for pretty much everything the likes of Disney produce, but then again these simpletons are probably not down with The Lion King, Bambi or Tarzan because some of the characters are not very nice...

One mother refuses to read her daughter any of the older tales because the little one cried after the wolf ate granny. So instead of actually having a conversation with her kid she simply banishes the source?

I can just imagine that these parents have no problem with their kids watching Jersey Shore and Keeping up with the Kardashians, which are a hell of scarier than anything the Brothers Grimm could have ever come up with.    

The evening news is more terrifying than anything in Rapunzel. Are parents going to keep the real world away from their children as well?

Albert Einstein wisely said: "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales."

I remember bawling my eyes out when Bambi’s mom got shot. I also cried in ET, Old Yeller and plenty of others classics, yet they still endure as some of my favourite movies of all time. I must admit I never cried after being read Little Red Riding Hood, but while Hansel and Gretel had me hiding under the covers as a kid, it was also one of my favourites and I would beg to have it read to me before bed.

This kind of rubbish is just another example of how shut-off and how ridiculously politically correct we are becoming.

These parents have every right to choose what they want to read to their kids, but it sounds to me like they are avoiding these stories because it is too awkward or difficult to explain some of the heavier themes that lie within the covers of these books, rather than for fear of their kids’ well-being.

And that is just a cop-out.