When it’s OK to swear in front of children

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/20/when-ok-to-swear-in-front-of-children-book

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My mother didn’t like swearing around children, and operated a complete ban around me until I was 16. As a result I find swearing big and clever, and funny too, particularly since moving to the US, where no one knows how to do it. Brits may lag in every other category, but we are still undeniable world leaders in making even minor-league swear words like “tit” sound amusing.

The question of swearing and children is one I struggle with. It’s not like smoking, or even yelling, which is ugly and ineffective. Swearing, on the other hand, is ugly but funny, and it’s a pleasure I increasingly don’t know whether or not to deny myself. And that’s when I even have a choice.

A recent book on the subject by Benjamin K Bergen, a professor of cognitive science, suggests that swearing in front of children is less bad than we think. “Children’s minds,” he writes, in What the F: What Swearing Reveals about our Language, our Brains and Ourselves, “are resilient to profanity.” He goes on to debunk a 2010 study that suggested all swearing around children constitutes “verbal abuse”.

This seems obvious. But it depends, says Bergen, on the context. If I swear casually with friends within my kids’ earshot, it’s not a big deal; if I swear into their faces, it is. But what about the middle way? I don’t swear at my children, but I do sometimes swear alongside them; I do parallel swearing. When they do something infuriating, which is a phase we’re in at the moment, I pick up whatever they’ve thrown, muttering furiously like Yosemite Sam. They eye me warily. I feel guilty. The cycle reboots.

Baby talk: the script

Once a week I take my 20-month-olds to the baby gym, where a man called Mr Steve teaches them to sing and dance. Mr Steve is in his mid-30s, and I’ve only ever heard him use baby talk. Several times I have tried to nudge him out of character. Last week, for example, when my child squawked, I said to her, archly: “You sound like a prehistoric bird,” then looked meaningfully at Mr Steve. Clearly my choice of the word “prehistoric” was not for the baby but for the adult, a reminder that we are adults, and have more than four words – bubbles, dance, jump and ball-y – at our disposal. I thought he might smile, but he just turned to the baby and quacked like a duck.

What, I wonder, would happen if I just busted out and asked him what he thought of the election. Or about his plans for the future. Or said anything to him not in the exclamatory mode.

It’s no good appealing to the other mothers; we’re none of us there to make friends and by tacit agreement talk only about the babies. All that leaves me with is trying to trade withering glances with my own children, who invariably give me a severe look along the lines of: behave yourself and stick to the script – if you break persona, we’re all out of a job.

Dial S for salvation

It’s never the big things that push you over the edge: it’s the tiny tipping points. This morning, the Salvation Army were supposed to collect some bags of clothes from my apartment, and I missed their call by a minute. When I called back, the guy said too bad, they’d left. While this was happening the toast burned, so that as the babysitter walked in, I was in mid-sweary meltdown.

Then the clothing dispatcher rang back and said that, actually, they were still in the building. I was so pathetically grateful that I instantly switched tones and, like a parody of an English lady said: “Thank you so much and so sorry for the earlier trouble.”

The babysitter raised an eyebrow but carried on wiping my child’s face. Now I’m back to square one. I think the swearing is fine; it’s the fake cheer I find really offensive.