An observation: The parents of "Dora the Explorer" are some of the most irresponsible adults in all of cartoon history.
Here their daughter is, talking to animals, including a monkey, a bull, and a squirrel, and they don't even blink an eye. Daily, it seems, she is getting into dangerous situations, such as jumping over sharks in a boat, climbing a mountain, running from a dragon, and riding on a train with missing parts in the tracks. In all of these situations she has nothing more than a backpack and a map along with some various friends to help her get through them. Her parents are apparently too busy having tea and biscuits to be aware of the danger their daughter is engaged in.
At the same time, the cause of much of these problems happens to be a fox who steals her belongings and then endangers her life by placing the things he steals in hard to reach places. The police are apparently unheard of in this world and theft is so common that children are left to their own devices in getting their belongings back. Child endangerment and reckless behavior are the flavor of the day.
In such a world, any sane parent would never let their child go unmonitored outside for a minute. Ever. Yet Dora's parents not only allow it, but in one episode seem to encourage it by asking her tell the "funny" story of the time they had to chase after babies who were helplessly caught in run-away strollers and ended up right next to a volcano. Of course the volcano erupted with a harmless result, but that is hardly reassuring when you consider that the whole family was unable to catch up to their run away strollers, and on more than one occasion the babies went through situations that would normally be considered life threatening. Once again this illustrates the gross irresponsibility of Dora's parents, along with their callousness in that they thought it was a "funny" story.
Of course no child looks at cartoons in this way, but upon consideration I have to say that Dora's parents are horribly scary people.
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