5 children’s authors who don’t like children and are bad parents

When we were children, we loved reading fairy tales and followed the adventures of our favorite heroes with excitement. The stories are written so vividly and captivatingly that there is no doubt that the authors know the soul of the child. So what kind of parents were they? We’ll tell you which children’s book authors really don’t like children.

Alan Milne

Winnie the Pooh has become a favorite character of children around the world and a real curse for the son of writer Alan Milne, the same Christopher Robin. The ambitious father dreamed of becoming the editor-in-chief of the British satirical magazine Punch, but he was not very lucky, although his talent was undoubted. Her career kept her busy more than her family, so Christopher was always missing her attention.

Returning from the front after the First World War, Alan Milne suffered severe post-traumatic disorder and wanted only to write about the war. And somehow, unexpectedly for him, while walking with his 9-year-old son, he came across a fairy tale about a bear cub and his friends, including his son Christopher. Soon Milne wrote the story on paper and sent it to publishers, not at all expecting such wild success.

The author of the book “Winnie the Pooh” has become a celebrity, attending all social events with his wife and son Christopher, whom the public is eager to see. The naturally shy boy did not like that his father treated him like an animal instead of spending time with him. This greatly undermined their relationship. Growing up, Christopher could never forgive his father for his coldness and insensitivity. Meanwhile, Milne Sr. admitted that it was not a special love for children, but observation and his own memories that helped him write a children’s fairy tale.

Eduard Uspensky

The relationship between Eduard Uspensky and his daughter Tatyana cannot be called warm either. It seems to us readers that the creator of Cheburashka, the crocodile Gena and the cat Matroskin is a kind-hearted person. Unfortunately, the author showed cruelty to his own child and punished him for the slightest offense.

According to his recollections, they got along well with his father until the age of 11, but then Uspensky became a member of the sect of the “guru” Viktor Stolbun, who opened a “commune” for difficult teenagers. The cult leader had his own views on raising children. For example, they exploited child labor in the fields and used psychological violence. Unable to bear it, Tatyana ran away from there. Luckily, his father didn’t force him to go back there. Their relationship deteriorated further when Varis entered college.

According to him, the author of Cheburashka repeatedly raised his hand against him. That is why she protested so much when the State Duma proposed naming the literary prize after Tatyana’s father, whom she called a household tyrant. He also spoke in defense of the artist Leonid Shvartsman, who created Cheburashka as he is now known and loved. The writer’s daughter claimed that out of greed, Eduard Uspensky named only himself as the full author of this strange animal. Despite this, his father’s books became a part of Russian culture and brought childhood to several generations.

Agnia Barto

“The owner abandoned the rabbit, the rabbit got stuck in the rain, couldn’t get up from the bench, it was completely wet.” It seems that only a true connoisseur of a child’s soul can write such touching lines. He was even called the “child translator”. But Agnia Barto was not so simple: she collaborated with the KGB and persecuted another famous writer – the writer of “Moidodyr” Korney Chukovsky, who was accused of “bourgeois thinking”. It is noteworthy that the author of the book “Lyubochka” had two children from different marriages, but he did not write a single line about them. At the same time, it cannot be said that Barto does not like children, as he personally supervises the homes of hundreds of children. But it is not possible to say for sure whether this was from the heart or part of public business.

Sergey Mikhalkov

It turned out that the main children’s poet of the Soviet Union, Sergei Mikhalkov, and the father of directors Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Konchalovsky also did not love children, or rather, did not treat them with special warmth. This fact was confirmed even by his own children. True, this circumstance did not prevent him from writing the famous “Uncle Styopa”.

Astrid Lindgren

By Pippi Longstocking and Carlosona are not very good mothers. Astrid Lindgren (née Erikson) became pregnant at the age of 17 from her boss, the editor of the Vimmerby magazine Reinhold Blumberg, who was 30 years older than her and, moreover, married. She went to Denmark, where the name of the biological father could be kept secret, as it was considered shameful to have a child out of wedlock. To feed her newborn son Lars, she had to find a job and leave her son with a woman she knew, Maria Stevens. Lars called his mother by her name until he was five years old.

When Astrid married Nils Lindgren, her life slowly began to improve. Three years after the wedding, the storyteller had a daughter named Karin. But Lindgren managed to thrive and become an excellent mother for her children. It was they who began to inspire him to the famous fairy tales that we have loved since childhood.