Mother Gothel Good parent?

[alik44]

When it came to Mother Gothel From Tangle, WE all know the evil stuff about her.
But when it started out around after the kiddnapping. it was around those times wear she did raise the girl, and it made me always ask is Gothel a good example of parenting?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Well, yes and no, but ultimately no.

Sure she raised her, but it wasn't because she genuinely cared for the girl. It was so she had her own fountain of youth. And besides that she brew a tremendous amount of fear and guilt into her to keep her imprisoned.

 

[skywolfblue]

She treats Rapunzel more like a slave/object then a daughter. Gothel raised her, but only for entirely selfish reasons. As Casual Shinji mentions, Gothel instills fear and guilt into Rapunzel. That's not a good parent by any stretch of imagination.

Now, there are some extremely overprotective/selfish parents in the real world too, but they're horrible parents as well.

 

[JoJo]

Doubt it. She deliberately isolated Rapunzel for her own selfish reasons, depriving the girl of any social contact with peers or anyone who wasn't herself, and never letting Rapunzel see the outside world, that alone robs her of any pretence of being a 'good' parent. That and of course, it's clear by the end of the film that she didn't care one bit about her adoptive daughter's happiness.

 

[Asita]

Nope. While for most of the movie she isn't physically abusive, Gothel does raise more than a few flags in the emotional abuse department, consistently trying to undermine Rapunzel's self-confidence, trying her damnedest to make the her 'daughter' both physically and emotionally dependent on her, and far from above manipulation both with and without guilt-trips. This is at its most overt with the Mother Knows Best song and its reprise. Much of the song is spent insulting Rapunzel on as many fronts as possible[footnote]She directly calls Rapunzel all of the following in the lyrics: fragile, little, pet, sloppy, under-dressed, immature, clumsy, gullible, naive, grubby, ditzy, and chubby[/footnote] while reinforcing her dependence on Gothel by presenting the latter as the only source of comfort and 'goodness' in the world...and she exploits this to further toy with, torment and ultimately shame her into agreeing as the song ends.

Then cue the reprise later on which is preceded by a bit about how 'Flynn' might like Rapunzel, leading to this gem of a line: "Likes you? Please Rapunzel, that's demented! This is why you never should have left! Dear, this whole romance that you have invented just proves you're too naïve to be here. Why would he like you? Come on now, really? Look at you! You think that he's impressed?" This crosses well past the line of "this guy's a sleezeball" and is heavily implies that the fault is actually Rapunzel's, that the idea of anyone (other than Gothel) caring for Rapunzel was ludicrous. Does that sound like good parenting?