Discussion » Questions » Language » Poll: how much profanity did your parent(s) expose you to* when you were a young child?

Poll: how much profanity did your parent(s) expose you to* when you were a young child?

 


  *This refers only to any profanity that your parent(s) personally used when addressing you directly and/or when speaking to other people while you were within earshot. It does NOT refer to any other instances when the profanity was via media sources and/or people other than your parent(s) and you were allowed to be exposed to it. 

 


A. Absolutely none (such as, he/she/they never used any profanity at all).

B. Absolutely none (such as, I now know that he/she/they used profanity, but took care not to do so in my presence).

C. Only a few curse words here and there during my entire childhood, but it was extremely seldom, definitely not an everyday occurrence.

D. Some cursing on a steady basis throughout my entire childhood, it was part of his/her/their everyday speech.

E. A constant barrage of cursing that punctuated almost every sentence he/she/they ever uttered.

E1. In addition to E above, he/she/they used curse words/profanity directly referring to me, such as supposed “humor”, jeers, taunts, name-calling, or threats.

F. Two or more of the above, specifically:___________.

G. None of the above, or other answer, specifically:___________.


~

Posted - August 7, 2020

Responses


  • 16839
    C. And mild at that. "B*gger" and "Bl**dy" are the only ones I can recall them uttering.
      August 7, 2020 11:03 PM MDT
    4

  • 44655
    You can spell those out here.
      August 8, 2020 7:33 AM MDT
    1

  • 44655
    C. I didn't choose A. or B., as I know everyone slips up once in a while. But I don't remember other than a few Yiddish words. This post was edited by Element 99 at August 10, 2020 7:45 AM MDT
      August 8, 2020 7:35 AM MDT
    3

  • 7795
    D. Some cursing on a steady basis throughout my entire childhood, it was part of his/her/their everyday speech.
      August 8, 2020 7:37 AM MDT
    4

  • 10664

    A.  My parents were devout Christians and NEVER used ANY profanity.   They wouldn’t tolerate anyone using profanity in their household either.

      August 8, 2020 12:13 PM MDT
    5

  • 1952
    Oh boy gonna to have to go with D, my mother could make a sailor blush.
      August 8, 2020 12:29 PM MDT
    4

  • 44655
    Sounds like my first wife.
      August 9, 2020 7:06 AM MDT
    1

  • 10026
    A.)  Absolutely NONE!

    My parents NEVER SWORE!!  They didn't around us or by themselves.  EVER!
    Why?
    My dad wrapped it up in a statement at the dinner table once but it was one we ALL knew even before this statement.

    Cursing shows lack of creativity. They are slang words used as fillers because you aren't smart enough to concoct a different word while thinking of the word you need to use to communicate your feeling.
     99,9% of the time, you are using a curse word  expressing an action or place that has absolutely NO relevance to what you are trying to convey.
    They  show lack of knowledge, lack of creativity, but more so, lack of desire to communicate nicely and correctly.
    I get very heated on this topic.
    It goes to show what our generations are breeding.  Lack of all what we KNOW IS IMPORTANT.
    It shows stupidity.
    Only the stupid are breeding at phenomenal rates.  This will be the demise of our existence.
    There's a movie.  WATCH IT. 
    GRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
    Communicate correctly.  Think before you speak.  Listen before you answer.  It will WORK To YOUR advantage and the advantage to the human race.

    Sorry.
    On a tangent there.  My fingers were on a rampage.


      August 8, 2020 2:41 PM MDT
    5

  • 53528

      I love your father. 

    ~

      August 8, 2020 2:49 PM MDT
    1

  • 53528


      My experiences were quite different.

      My entire life, my mother has been a person very quick to anger and very difficult to please.  Vile, profane language was her go-to expressiveness when her buttons were pushed.  The paradox is that my mother is the exact type of person who on the surface one would not expect to conduct herself that way, for several reasons.  daughter of a Baptist preacher, and even though my grandmother left him for another man when my mother was very young (maybe 5 years old), her father remained a part of her life to a certain extent.  The man with whom my grandmother took up was an alcoholic and a ne-er-do-well who eventually died in an alcoholic stupor, so it's possible that my mother was exposed to many untoward aspects of life stemming from his presence in their household, the abject use of profanity was probably one of them.  My grandmother had her part in it too, with her decision that life with a calm, even-tempered and studious preacher was just too boring, and that a flashy party animal was an exciting alternative.  [My grandmother had never wanted to marry the preacher, but her family "urged" her into it.  She also knew the alcoholic guy already and wanted to be with him when she married the preacher, so it appears that he was waiting around in the wings.  All of that is an entirely different story, though.]  Even though intelligence itself is no guarantee of character or of personal conduct, my mother is also a highly educated and studious person.  She has always had the extensive vocabulary necessary for making herself understood, which perplexes me as to why the blue language was often her choice.

      When I was growing up and my mother's anger was a result of and/or directed at me and my siblings, the cursing was part and parcel of it.  My mother had two distinct personas: the sweet and outgoing one she used outwardly when talking on the phone, when greeting houseguests, when mingling with the congregation at church, when she was in a good mood, etc., and the  the hardened, mean, visceral, lashing out one that she used behind closed doors at home.  It seemed to me that other people outside of the family were more important to her than we were, because she presented her best self to them and her worst to us.  When the latter personage in her emerged, there was a particular word that she used when cursing at us, her own children, that to this day the mere remembrance of her using it causes a deep and negative reaction in me.  Of course, it also feeds into what I think of my mother.  I used to ask myself, "How can she love me and at the same time call me that, talk to me that way?"  It was extremely confusing for me as a young child, and because it continued throughout my entire childhood, as I became a pre-teen and a teen, that confusion became rampant apathy.  I lost the bound that a child feels for and to his mother.

      I remember when I was about six years old, I thought that my mother was to only mother who talked like that when she got angry.  Of course, I realize that many people have different faces depending on their situations, myself included, but at age six, I didn't know that.  Interacting with other families and other adults only showed me their positive sides, and especially in media images of people such as parents, mothers, cursing never showed up.  One day at school, we were taking turns reading a story aloud, an activity that I always loved because I had been an avid reader from an even younger age.  The story we were reading was about people who worked in a building and the nicknames that personified them, and the passage that I was supposed to read stopped me cold.  I saw the words, I knew the words, I knew how to say the words, but I froze.  I was so afraid that if I read that one word out loud, it would immediately broadcast to the whole world that my mother used profanity.  My six-year-old rationale took over, and I couldn't go on.  The teacher was stunned.   I had always read beautifully, and my vocabulary was far beyond my grade level.  There was no reason I should not have known the word or words, so she couldn't understand why I balked.  She read the passage herself, and even though I don't remember it verbatim, the words that stopped me are etched in my brain decades later.  The man in the building was an angry sort, so his nickname was Mr. Yell-And-Cuss.

    :|







      August 8, 2020 4:05 PM MDT
    1

  • 17620
    A.
      August 8, 2020 6:14 PM MDT
    3

  • 5451
    It's almost A.  Swearing was so rare from my parents that I can remember the three times my dad actually did swear.  Two of those times were at my half-brother, and the third time was in an argument with my mom over where I'd be going to high school.  Mom and dad have been divorced for a while, so lately my mom's been picking up the vernacular of the mobile home park where she lives now.  Dad still doesn't swear.

    My husband and I stopped using swear words when our kids started getting to the age where they might start learning them, so we instituted a swear jar to help us with that..  My husband was the last contributor to our swear jar, all thanks to a Ford Focus with Iowa license plates in front of us that pulled into the left lane on the freeway and then slowed way down, lol.


    This post was edited by Livvie at August 10, 2020 7:44 AM MDT
      August 9, 2020 3:44 AM MDT
    3

  • 53528

     

      I have relatives in their late 30s who are raising young children. Both the husband and wife use profanity almost as often as they inhale and exhale, and there’s not much evidence that they even attempt to restrict it around their children. One of the children was sent home from elementary school after repeated incidents of cursing, each time had carried a warning and notification of the parents. The reason my wife and I know about it is that in a conversation about parents interacting with the school, such as helping on classrooms, making sure homework is getting done, knowing your children’s friends and the families of those friends, etc., they sort of laughed off the incident. They acknowledged that they themselves use profanity all the time, but in the same breath “defended” it as being the normal way that language has evolved these days. That led into discussion of whether media imitates life or life imitates media. 

    _ _

      August 9, 2020 8:15 AM MDT
    3

  • 10026
    Some how I am not surprised.  These days the "f" word is as common as "the."  It no longer holds the disciplinary action as a bad word.  
    To begin with, making love to another person, which is what it is projected to be as a "bad" thing, should never have become a four letter word. 
    Here nor there, I think since we were taught almost all four-letter words were a bad thing and not the proper way to communicate, the generation under us rebelled to toward us, as parents.
    "We'll show them!"  "We'll sing with these words! What are they gonna do?  Say we can't sing?"  "We'll show them!"  "They can't stop us from using them if we use them all the time!!"  "What are they gunna do?"  "Tell us to stop speaking?"  "They can't do that!"  "We'll show them!"  "We'll ALL start doing it and then peer pressure will make even the goodie-two-shoes will have to succumb to our rebellion!"  "HA!  WE WIN you old folk lameOs!!!!!"  "We've shown you who we are!  How do you like us now?????"
      
    What has happened is we have degraded ourselves in verbal communication.  Rebellion happens in all generations.  This happened to be the sad one that happened in this generation.
    It is just my opinion and observation.  It doesn't change the fact that this action is literally hurting our attempt and bettering the human race.
    At least women wearing pants HELPED the species.  It helped the working class work easier and more comfortably.
    ;) :)
      August 9, 2020 10:22 AM MDT
    3

  • 34460
    Between B and C....but closer to B. 
      August 9, 2020 9:50 AM MDT
    3

  • C.  Get either parent worked up enough and they'd lose control.  But definitely for the most part they did their best not to say it around me.  I'm taking the same approach with my own kids. 
      August 10, 2020 7:43 AM MDT
    1