High maternal mortality rates historically drove the wicked stepmother fairy tale motif.

Evidence

In Europe in the days when maternal mortality was high—that is, every age till very recently—a bereaved husband acted just like the father in the Tale of the Juniper Tree; he wept greatly, then he wept a bit less, then he rose and took a new wife. At some point, the child of the lost wife is sure to ask: “What did my mother die of?” In the Juniper Tree, the mother died of “joy.” It’s a more acceptable answer than “she died of you.” But not many children, in real life or in fairy tales, can have been fooled in this way. … Generations have been born into blood-guilt and reared by wraiths, the dead mother hovering over the cradle, blighting the new marriage: souring the milk and cracking the bowls, starting fires in the thatch and unravelling the products of the loom. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 166

Categorization

• SEED: SEED
• XREF: XREF connecting fairy tale motifs to historical child mortality realities.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 166