I found this hard to believe, since my copies of the series has the medal on The Black Cauldron and The High King both. However, looking closer I see that The Black Cauldron was a Newberry Honor book. So I’ll give you points for the nit, but call my statement close enough. 
The whole series rocks, though.
That’s a given. 
Re: Cats
The tiger in Aladdin was good. As was (Cleo?) the cat in Pinoccio.
So were most of the Aristocats.
Re: mothers
I’ve heard it tossed about (amongst bored English students, and re:Harry Potter) that the easiest way to put a child protagonist in danger, and thus make us care about them, is to make the person closest to them and most resposible for them the threat.
When you remove “parents” you are placing them beyond blame, giving the comfort factor of “you have parents and they’d never let anything like this happen to you.”
Just a theory.
AL
I think there is a bigger issue here. For instance, how many popular sitcoms or films had a dead or absent mother and a widowed father.
“My Three Sons”
“Andy Griffith”
“The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”
“the Brady Bunch”
“Who’s the Boss”
“Full House”
“My Two Dads” (not one but two of 'em!)
There are a lot more, those are just some of the longer running series. However, a single or widowed mother was almost unheard of until fairly recently. Maybe it’s just a holdover from Victorian era morality - or Victorian era maternal death rates. A single dad with kids results in ensuing comic hijinks! A single mother with kids is…well…a little hard to explain.
Ack! Ppppbt! Yes, of course…
The MCP must’ve finagled its way into my computer as well…
Press ENTER…
No, Cleo was the fish, Gideon was the cat. Gideon was pretty evil at first (well, I guess he was just being a cat), and then when P becomes a real boy, he kisses Cleo (with tongue, it appears).
It does seem that even when Disney characters do have a father, that they often don’t have a mother. That is, if they have a single parent, it’s most likely to be the dad, probably due to cuate reasoning. I.e., Jasmine in “Aladdin,” “Pochahontas,” and “Pinocchio.” But then again, in the Aristocats, the mother cat is a single parent.
Why were there hunters in the Spring? Deer Huntin’ Season is the fall and early winter…
To be fair, there was also an absent father in this show.
I guess that a widowed/abandoned father is more commonly portrayed because there is less implication of illegitimacy. A single father is often a more sympathetic character, as childraising isn’t usually the male role. It affords the child an opportunity to matchmake and get a perfect mother to complete the family, or to be victimised by a cruel stepmother, allowing the child to gain sympathy as a victim before turning the tables and defeating the cruel anti-mother.
As a child, I used to play with my cousins, and we would seek adventure - but our mothers called it “Getting into mischief” and used to spoil our fun and drag us home, where there was no chance of finding adventure under their watchful eyes. Removing the mother character from children’s stories also removes the authority figure who would make many of the adventures impossible. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t, mothers are either spoilsports or neglectful.
The cat in Pinocchio is Figaro.
Think of the worst fear you have as a child. The absolute worst. To me, it was the thought of my parents, esp. my mother, dying. Disney movies like Bambi illustrate how there is life beyond the worst thing. Bambi survived and even thrived after the death of his mother.
Here’s the deal- fairy tales are psychological adventures in becoming responsible, moral adults. To do this, the child must be removed from the comforting presence of a mother figure to be able to become his or her own person. They must be forced to stand alone against a witch figure (the evil stepmother, etc.) and prove themselves and their goodness. A good read on this is The Witch Must Die: How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives by Sheldon Cashdan. I think the book is out of print now, but amazon.com has it. It’s a great book.
Who’s the Boss isn’t an absent mother show, it’s a blended family and a role reversal story–Tony plays the mothers role and Angela the father’s.
Shows with absent/dead fathers aren’t uncommon:
Kate and Allie
Murphy Brown
Good Times (father dies after first season)
The Parkers
Gilmore Girls
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Grace Under Fire
The Torkelsons
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
Having an absent parent makes for the possibility of new romance, which many an episode can be based upon. A happily married couple is often seen as less interesting than a single, dating parent, though shows like The Cosby Show and Family Ties function quite well with a full set of parents and a well adjusted family.
You know that, and I know that, but most small children don’t. I think Walt was after some dramatic impact here. You see a montage of winter-time scenes with Bambi and Mother roaming through the snow, getting hungrier as food becomes more and more scarce. Then Bambi’s mother finds a small patch of new spring grass, they start pigging out, and just when you’re thinking the bad old winter is over and everything’s going to be okay, BAM! Mother - she’s what’s for dinner.
The thing that confused me about that movie was the way the hunters shot at everything that moved. Field mice, chipmunks, skunks…what can one possibly do with a dead field mouse? Make a really tiny hat?
Go here. 
Wow! You’re really on to something.
Next, let’s get after Marvel Comics. Think of it:
Peter Parker/Spider-Man. No mother (or father). Just Aunt May. Plus Uncle Ben took a cap.
Ben Grimm/The Thing. No mother. And even she wouldn’t love him. But he did have his Auntie Petunia.
Silver Surfer. No mother.
Daredevil. No mother.
X-Men: No mothers.
Doctor Doom: No mother to say “My son, the doctor.”
Galacticus. So where’d he come from?
Odin: Though he probably sprang full-formed from something or other.
Conan: Poor lil orphan.
Ant Man: So where’s the queen of the colony, hmmm?
Lockjaw: That big dog. So where’s the b*itch?
The Watcher: Oh, sure, he just pops up on the moon one day, right? I’m so sure.
The Black Panther: Had a whole tribe and everything but (dramatic pause) no mother!
Prince Namor: So where’s Queen Namor?
I defy you to name any Marvel character who had a mother, other than a baby born to an already established character like Sue Richards. See! I think we’re onto something here. We need to take action immediately and boycott these despicable anti-mom people.
Ready everyone?
Hey, hey, ho ho
Marvel Comics got to go!
First off, anyone who thinks Disney is putting subliminal messages in their cartoons to corrupt children should check out what Snopes has to say about the subject. (Long story short: It’s mostly bullshit.)
Why are there no mother figures in Disney movies? That question reminds me of a time I was playing Tomb Raider and my mom asked, “Why do you need to shoot the poor wolves? Can’t you just get along?” Well, you know what? A videogame where you just sat around and pet the cute little doggies wouldn’t be very interesting at all. And a Disney movie where the main characters just stayed at home with their parents probably wouldn’t be too exciting.
I would have to say, when Lilo & Stitch first came out, I didn’t like it at all, because it’s so blatantly predictable, and you can get basically the entire story from watching the previews. But looking back, it’s actually a really good movie. It’s got a simple plot, but that’s the point. It’s a simple and universal message. And despite not having a mother, Lilo & Stitch portrays the mother-daughter bond better than any other Disney movie. Two thumbs up for Lilo & Stitch.
Correction: there is a mother in Peter Pan. In the opening scene, the mother and father are going out for the night and the children are left home with Nana, the dog. Talk about brilliant parenting!
Now, on to the premise. This is not so much Disney, as fairy tales. I recall from back in my college days hearing a thesis that the mother was often/always absent in these stories to reinforce the father’s role. It was not escapist fantasy, it was so daddy, who was often absent (off working most of the time), could be portrayed in a positive light. Since the tales were probably anyway told by the mother, it could also way of reinforcing that you don’t want to lose mommy.
Actually, a number of the X-Men and related groups (Jean Grey, Bobby Drake, Hank McCoy, Sam and Paige Guthrie, Kitty Pryde) have mothers.
Plus you’ve missed the fact that DC probably has just as many missing mothers.
Batman/Bruce Wayne (parents murdered), Nightwing/Dick Grayson (parents murdered), Robin/Tim Drake (mother dead), Superman/Clark Ken (parents died in planet explosion), Superboy (no parents).
It’s a whole conspiracy.
I don’t fault Disney for this, it’s the common theme of many storytales, many that Disney adapted. And, in that tradition, I don’t see it as being agianst motherhood, or women. So many of the traditional tales do have young women overcoming adversity, and entering a magical world, devoid of all parental dictates, in order to become a stronger person. That’s just it: fairytales enable a child to see a world that they can explore with all of the magic of imagination, without someone telling them it’s just impossible.
Tales of fairies, witches, wolves, hobbits, and even cartoon mice and ducks, allow a space for play, apart from an increasingly harsh world, and have lessons to teach as well; the lessons of the journey of finding oneself. I suppose that the absent mother is key to that, and important in fantastic teaching tales, probably since the first such stories told. I don’t see it as a slight, but as an allegory, written by adults who wanted to pass on the lessons they’d learned.
I guess the question for me is, why have we found that journey of separation so important? Is it a human necessity, separating from an all-important Mother, in order to establish our own identity? Or can we make new tales of integration with others, and appreciate that bond while being our own selves, too.
This has been addressed a couple years ago…The Truth about Disney’s Evil Parents 7/13/98