I’ve Never Once Heard Good Reason for this Wide-Spread Parenting Rule
There’s a lovely book series that hardly anyone knows about (except Kathleen Kelly in You’ve Got Mail, because she is amazing). The Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace is like Anne of Green Gables — and just as fun— but twenty years later and set in Deep Valley, Minnesota.
In the second volume, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib (three best friends) create a Christian Kindness Club where all members (just the three of them, as it turns out) must put stones in their pockets any time they do something “bad.”
At one point, Betsy says “darn” and the other girls gasp. That was a cuss word back then. Betsy put a stone in her pocket.
As a child reading that story, I laughed at the idea of anyone thinking “darn” was a bad word. As an adult, I laugh at the idea of anyone thinking any of our current “cuss” words are bad words in and of themselves.
The idea of “cussing” seems to have originated with the idea that a mere mortal should not curse someone or swear an oath on higher powers, e.g. “I swear to God,” or “Damn it all to hell.” For awhile, swear words also represented, essentially, “poor-people words,” words of the proletariat, if you will (upscale folks simply did not say “ass,” for instance).
But nowadays, the average Joe doesn’t really think of it in these ways (not that thinking of it in these ways would make it better). We’ve just turned it into a random handful of words that we’re collectively offended by and that, defying the laws of logic, we grown-ups can use but our children (and radios) cannot.
Seriously, I recently heard someone say (I kid you not) that they’d love for their THIRTEEN-year-old to be able to watch DEADPOOL if only it didn’t have so much…wait for it…swearing. Yep. They weren’t worried about the full frontal nudity or the literal blowing up of humans and body parts flying everywhere (note: I am not dissing on Deadpool, which I actually find quite hilarious). It was the fact that they said “fuck” over 40 times (this person counted). That was the problem: a made-up rule that caused actual feelings of victimization/offense for this person.
Very few things are more idiotic than making up reasons out of thin air to be collectively offended. There are enough actual things in life (like, hurricanes and shit) to cause us actual trouble. We don’t need to make up more.
But we do.
Oh, and then we unscrupulously apply these made-up rules (with no basis in fact) to some classes of people (i.e. kids) but not others (i.e. adults), when it has literally nothing to do with those classes of people.
Why was this adult just fine watching Deadpool but not his thirteen-year-old? Why do adults swear up and down but collectively look shocked when children do it?
Seriously, it’s about as stupid (which, by the way, used to be a cuss word) as telling kids they can’t wear colored socks or clothes with wooden buttons until they’re adults…
Why not make a rule that children cannot use hate speech and bullying language instead of giving them a random list of words they can’t use in any context?
Do we think that’s too complicated for kids?
It’s not.
Have more faith in your children. Truly. Every child understands the difference between ‘damn’ and ‘damn you!’
Or maybe we still believe that children who say ‘damn’ are witches casting actual spells?
For the non-religious, banning children from swearing is plainly ridiculous. And for the religious, wasn’t a higher law introduced? The common rules around swearing feel pretty much like old laws of Moses for simple-minded Children of Israel.
In my house, children are discouraged from using swear words directed at another person, or, actually, any bullying words directed at another person, but we don’t just willy-nilly remove words from a child’s vocabulary for no reason.
I don’t know, what am I missing here? I’ve asked many parents about this, and I’ve never once heard a good reason for why kids should be banned from using swear words (other than the fact that they will be unfairly judged by adults for doing so because we are still a bunch of dumb apes).
Maybe you can change my mind?
But I’d be damn surprised if you could.
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