Mother Knows Best (song) siren motif" for Gothel's appearance and personality. A "big" musical number, "Mother Knows Best" begins within the first fifteen minutes of "Tangled" during the film's first act when, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Rapunzel finally summons enough courage to ask Gothel for permission to travel and see the floating lanterns in person. Gothel, whose eternal youth and beauty solely relies on the safety and protection of Rapunzel's magical hair, denies this request by sarcastically reminding her that "mother knows best," warning her ward that "the world is full of wicked people who want to steal her hair's magic,"
Mother Knows Best (song) work" while "Frollo is a much more sophisticated villain, but easier to understand ... than Mother Gothel", whose relationship with Rapunzel is more manipulative than the Frollo-Quasimodo dynamic. While writing "Mother Knows Best", Menken was briefly concerned that "there [would] be a rash of children trying to kill their parents after they’ve seen the movie." According to directors Byron Howard and Nathan Greno, one of the song's lines, "getting kind of chubby", was lifted from an interview the directors had held with several female Disney employees, in which they asked them to describe their relationships with their mothers. Menken was