ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Development
"Why Santa but Not Witches?": Parents' Reasoning Behind Encouraging and Discouraging Fantasy Beliefs in Children
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, United States
- 2Teaching and Learning Centre, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore, Singapore
- 3University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Psychology, Madison, United States
- 4Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, United States
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During the preschool years, children begin to distinguish fantasy and reality. In the United States, this is also often the time parents encourage belief in certain fantasy figures (e.g., Santa Claus) while discouraging belief in others (e.g., witches). Although prior research offers insights into why parents support belief in Santa Claus specifically, less is known about their support of childhood fantasy beliefs more broadly. Furthermore, the relation between child and parental factors and the decision to support such beliefs has not been investigated in any detail. To address these gaps, two studies were conducted: Study 1 (n = 39) explored the motivation behind parental support for a wide range of childhood fantasy beliefs, and Study 2 (n = 486) examined how individual factors relate to this support. We also examined whether parental support, as well as parents' own and their children's beliefs in fantasy figures, have changed over the past 30 years. Parents of children aged 3 to 8 years participated in these studies. The results suggest that parents in the United States support childhood fantasy beliefs to promote their children's wellbeing—by creating a childhood filled with excitement, fostering cultural understanding, and protecting children from negative emotions (e.g., fear). These findings were consistent across the two cross-sectional studies conducted over a 12-year period, although some variations were observed in parental reports of their own and their child's beliefs and encouragement when compared with a previous report from the 1990s. Parents' decisions to support fantasy beliefs were associated with their attitudes towards fantasy beliefs, their religiosity, and their child's age.
Keywords: Children, fantasy beliefs, Parental support, religious beliefs, Santa Claus
Received: 10 Sep 2025; Accepted: 06 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yoo, Jiang and Rosengren. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Seung Heon Yoo, syoo22@ur.rochester.edu
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