Is it not about time that we buried these nursery rhymes?

M y wife and I have a child-rearing bible: What to Expect: The First

Year, by Heidi Murkoff. Many parents will have heard about this book, or read it, or used it as a doorstop at one point or another.

As new parents to a now 10-month-old, her book has been a great help. We study it regularly, go through the recommended checklists and accept advice from Murkoff like we’re receiving trusty directions in a dark, haunted forest in the middle of the night. But… and this is a big but: on one of those information-filled folios lies a disturbing piece of guidance: Sing nursery rhymes to your children.

It sounds harmless. Parents all over the world are participating in this age-old tradition at this very moment, but have you ever really investigated these little children’s ditties? They may as well be called Nursery Nightmares.

Why are we still singing our children songs about plagues, persecutions and the punishment for prostitution that date all the way back to the early 18th century, and each comes with its own sinister little message.

Rock a Bye Baby ends with a child falling to its death from a tree. This raises so many questions, here’s just one: What the hell is the baby doing in a crib at the top of a tree? I don’t have to begin to tell you about Ring

a Ring ‘o Roses – we all know it’s said to be about the plague and more kids dying.

And then there are others like Goosey

Goosey Gander. I guess the alliteration in the title of that one is meant to soften the blow that it’s actually about how Catholic priests had to say their Latin prayers in secret to avoid persecution – even in their own homes. Three innocent blind mice have to have their tails chopped off and the old fruity classic Oranges and Lemons literally contains the words: Here comes a chopper, to chop off your head, because it’s about a man being executed.

Experts will tell you that, developmentally, nursery rhymes are important for children because it helps aid their development and spatial reasoning – which by the way is the ability to generate reasoning.

They also argue that they’re an important tool in cultivating language and harnessing bonds between parents and children. Bonds of what? Blood and brutality?

I’m sorry, I refuse to raise my child with songs that potentially end up making him drown a kitten like in Ding Dong Bell, or scare the living day lights out of him because his head is constantly a candidate for the great chop. I may as well let him fall asleep to DMX.

Is this why we don’t have nursery rhymes in modern times? Because we’ve evolved enough to not share coded, dark messages with children about those living with HIV, or the influence of the patriarchy or how they have to be completely racist and insensitive and hate Asian people (the Chinese) in specific because if we go near them they will catch Corona and die. Can you imagine what they would sound like?

Little girl Ling

Sat down in spring

Eating a pangolin pie

She ate the last crumb

And to a virus succumbed

And said ‘oh, what a dead girl am I?’