Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.

The useful art of being ignored

There's something liberating about this joke because it cuts through the pretense both ways. Kids aren't secretly grateful for rules and guidance in the moment—they're busy rolling their eyes and doing the opposite. And parents, if we're honest, know they're often background noise to their kids' real lives, which is both a relief and a tiny heartbreak. The rebellion itself becomes the point.

But Nash is also describing something real about how people grow. We don't become ourselves by accepting what our parents teach us wholesale. We become ourselves partly against them, by testing their limits, disagreeing with their values, and figuring out what we actually believe when their voice isn't the only one in our head. That friction isn't a bug in the system—it's kind of the whole mechanism. Parents provide the scaffolding, and children use it to climb somewhere unexpected.

The twist is that this "giving them something to ignore" might be exactly what parents should be doing. Not trying so hard to be fascinating or relevant or friends. Just existing as a stable, slightly annoying force that kids can push off from. Sometimes the most useful thing a parent can be is something solid enough to rebel against.