Parenting & Family Quote by Ogden Nash

A Nash line like this works because it’s a scalpel wrapped in a nursery rhyme. He borrows the famous moralistic cadence of “Oh, what a tangled web we weave...” and swaps in the real modern culprit: not villains or liars in general, but parents performing adulthood for an audience that lives in the house. The joke lands fast, but the sting lingers. “Tangled web” isn’t just deceit; it’s the messy logistics of keeping a story straight across years, moods, and dinner tables. Nash’s wit is diagnostic: the minute parents decide children are naive, they start acting as if concealment is care, and then spend the rest of their time managing the consequences.

The subtext is an indictment of condescension. Children aren’t blank slates; they’re surveillance machines with feelings. They notice tone, avoidance, the way explanations shrink when the subject is money, sex, conflict, hypocrisy. Nash flips the usual power dynamic: the “naive” ones are often the adults, naive about how legible their fear and self-justifications really are. The web gets tangled because it’s spun from mixed motives - protection, shame, control, the desire to be liked, the desire to stay unaccountable.

Context matters: Nash built a career on light verse that smuggled hard truths past polite society. Mid-century American family ideals leaned heavily on the picture-window myth of calm authority and spotless domestic order. This line punctures that myth with a grin, suggesting the home isn’t a sanctuary from performance - it’s where performance is most aggressively rehearsed, and most quickly caught.