Tragedy and the Child

"Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the OGPU and the atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." C. S. Lewis On Three ways of writing for Children 

In todays culture and media we mostly try to steer children from tragedy, death, and anything that will scare or rile them up. Now, of course there is a line to where you can't drown a child in it, but most parents try to hide such things from their children and filter everything to such an unnecessary degree.
If we hide death from children, they won't know what true courage is. They won't know what it is to look their enemies in the eye and battle to what might be their heroic death! Also, they won't know what it is to run away from the enemy in cowardice shame and fear. When they do figure it out they'll be more sorrowful over the concept of death than the deceased. Fairy-tales can't and won't reflect adventure in anyones life if the individual hasn't been rooted in understanding them.

Also, why does my generation long so much for the child hood they have lost?
One reason, I believe, is that they have lost the Fairy-Tale lens to look through at life and the magic that comes with it. They look at tragedy and can't find the beauty in it. They want to go back to the child who was happily oblivious to life's responsibilities and that looked at everything like it was the gateway to another secret world.  The truth is, if every could maintain that view of the world and never grow up, we would all be some pretty amazing people. There wouldn't be anybody who I wouldn't want to sit and listen to talk about anything in general.