The first few fucks were pretty cute – adorable even – and I think I probably laughed too much and too hard, and soon we were living with three little sailors; possibly the foulest people I’ve lived with, and all under the age of 10.
They soon developed a physical addiction to swearing, which they fed by asking our home-based smart devices to play the songs they knew were chock full of swear words, and when those devices started playing them, a clean, radio-friendly version. , they would stop it and find “the right one”.
A few years into their curse journey, our children’s use and affinity for bad words shows no sign of stopping. It’s now so common for them to say f*** that we don’t even bother to police “s***”, “a**hole” and “p*** off, d***” anymore heads”.
I’m still trying to stop the f***s and f***-adjacent things, but half-heartedly, because the genie is out of the bottle and because technology has more power over it than I will ever have, and because there is too are many. other things to worry about, like the price of watermelons.
My point is that one day in the not too distant future these cute little dirty mouths will grow up and inherit the damn world and real estate market their grandparents broke down. Is it really so wrong to let them feel the joy and freedom that comes with using forbidden language for at least a while, before it loses its tension and becomes just another way of coping with a life they can’t imagine? to afford?
While writing this article, I texted my wife to ask for her favorite examples of our kids swearing. She responded with, “You didn’t? written about the children swearing already?” I told her it wasn’t, but when I checked, I found it was. Worse, I had only done this barely a year ago.
“How did this happen?” I asked myself. The only rational answer is that I am mentally deteriorating and the reason is that I am a parent – because having children is not only the most wonderful thing in the world, but also the hardest.
The legendary poet and grumpy Philip Larkin, who had no children, famously wrote: “They’re destroying you, your mother and father / They may not mean to, but they will.”
No parent would have written these lines, partly because they didn’t have time, but mainly because it’s so hard to see your own mistakes when you’re so overwhelmed by those of your children.
Nevertheless, in my lucid moments, usually when the kids are watching TV, I have to acknowledge that Larkin had a point. Yes, having a child is damn hard, but so is being a child. Why could only one of us say this?