Parenting & Family Quote by Elias Canetti

There is something almost nauseating in how calmly Canetti names a dirty little social ritual: adults lying to children isn’t just “for their own good,” it’s a source of pleasure. That word choice matters. He isn’t primarily accusing parents of occasional expediency; he’s diagnosing a power dynamic. Deception becomes a miniature stage where adults get to rehearse authority, test compliance, and feel clever for “managing” someone smaller and dependent.

The subtext is bleakly transactional. Adults insist the lie is necessary because necessity launders domination into care. It turns manipulation into “guidance,” the way euphemisms turn violence into “discipline.” Canetti’s pivot to enjoyment is the knife twist: if you’re having fun, you’re not protecting innocence; you’re exploiting it. The child becomes an audience that can’t walk out.

Then comes the second sting: children aren’t fooled for long. Canetti refuses the sentimental image of childhood as pure credulity. Kids learn fast because they have to; their survival depends on reading adult moods, spotting inconsistencies, decoding the gap between what’s said and what’s meant. When they begin to “practice deception themselves,” it’s less moral failing than cultural inheritance. The adult world trains them in the very behavior it later condemns as “lying.”

Contextually, this fits Canetti’s lifelong obsession with crowds, authority, and the subtle technologies of control. He’s tracing how domination reproduces itself at home, in the nursery, long before it scales up into institutions. The quote lands because it makes deception feel not like an exception to upbringing, but one of its founding methods.