That's an improvement from working at the farm starting age 5!

Fairy tails is essentially teaching kids to stay away from bad influences. Telling to not go into the forest alone because X/Y/Z might happen is not far from telling to not go into a bad neighbourhood or visit a certain kid. And fairy tales did happen in pretty much any culture for thousands of years.

It was keeping them away from starvation and the lucky were given the rudiments of a christian education (which otherwise was unheard of) as part of their 'employment'.

I bet it was better than TikTok challenges that went wrong.

Totally, photos of street kids: - https://sk.pinterest.com/pin/6544361950034985/ - https://sk.pinterest.com/pin/2392606043703676/ - https://sk.pinterest.com/pin/340725528070828317/ - https://sk.pinterest.com/pin/824158800572041820/

and so on

At least these kids were still alive.

Pretty much always when people say things like this, they are talking about few % of ruling class (whether they were bureaucratic, capitalist, feudal lords or whatever), and imagine themselves as part of this class.

The ruling class did _not_ shy away from debauchery. King Edward VII of England was so fat he had a special sex chair made so his stomach wouldn't get in the way.

Sure, they did. While preaching "christian values" like many of the current lawmakers.

As if people in other rungs of society didn't look after their kids...? Fairy tales didn't appear out of thin air.