These are fairy tales we’re talking about. Accurately representing a historical context was never the goal. Telling a compelling story is the goal, and to do that you need to adapt to your audience.
The question is whether to choose broad appeal or narrow appeal. Narrow appeal is more salient to a smaller group of people. Most narrow appeal media won’t be profitable enough. So large companies target broad appeal media. It is good, but may be altered to broaden the appeal. For example Red Dawn 2012 changed the enemies from Chinese to North Korean because China has a huge middle class (potential customers) and North Korea does not, despite the fact that a Chinese invasion might be scarier or more plausible.
All the more reason to take historical accuracy seriously. These stories were intentionally written to scare the shit out of little children in immediate graphic horror, to give them paralyzing nightmares.
The primary reason was to teach child to stay out out of the forest, or if absolutely necessary, then at the very least stay on the damn road and listen to their parents. The forest was a scary place full of beasts and bandits. People did not have cell phones. If a child got lost and injured in the forest they would probably starve to death, or if lucky, be devoured by wolves.
Let's not censor this so Disney can sell cartoons to the sad and ignorant. Instead let's enjoy it for what it was as it was written. People would lose their damn minds if you took the same actions to remove the violence and sexual fantasy out of Shakespeare, which was pale in comparison.
The only plausibly defensible purpose of scaring kids was to scare them into staying safe. Not for the sake of scaring them. But if you’re actually interested in scaring children to protect them you should be writing stories about guns, car accidents and drugs, not wolves and witches.
AFAIK many of the tales that Grimm collected were told in the context of Germany during the 100 year's war. Due to economic and geopolitical conditions of the times, it was literally true that the woods were full of predators. They were just human veterans of a lifetime of war and deprivation, rather than wolves. It was a very good idea to instill in your farm daughter the notion that the world out there is not safe, and don't trust people.
The question is whether to choose broad appeal or narrow appeal. Narrow appeal is more salient to a smaller group of people. Most narrow appeal media won’t be profitable enough. So large companies target broad appeal media. It is good, but may be altered to broaden the appeal. For example Red Dawn 2012 changed the enemies from Chinese to North Korean because China has a huge middle class (potential customers) and North Korea does not, despite the fact that a Chinese invasion might be scarier or more plausible.