Parenting Magazine

Real Parents Say Fuck

Unless you live in a Leave it to Beaver world that only exists in your head you have probably said “Fuck” in front of your children. You have probably said worse than that and gone through George Carlin’s entire list at one point in time. Oh there are those who never say, “Fuck”, much less do it. For them, Gee, Golly, Gosh, Darn and fudge are strong enough curse words and they fucking well say them too.

I am not advocating you teach your aspiring infant to say motherfucker, much less anything they could learn by watching Deadwood. They will pick up this sort of language all on their own. They shouldn’t be denied the same sense of fulfillment of learning forbidden knowledge the rest of us had. It is part of growing up.

Those who hate the word Fuck will tell you, “The F-word has become pervasive in our culture.” I laugh every time I hear that, because they are mostly right. Fuck most certainly has penetrated every fold of our culture, except that deep crack where those who feel the need to tell us how bad the “F-word” is reside. It is almost funny that they can talk about the “F-word” while denying the word Fuck is part of their own vocabulary. You can hardly talk intelligently about something you have no knowledge of.

In the end it is up to you to decide what your kids hear out of your mouth. If Fuck comes out of it sometimes, then it only proves you live in the real world. Don’t get bent when other turn up their noses and open their mouths about the language we might utter in front of our children. If You take nothing else away from this parenting course, remember those with such high brow contempt for us common folk and our language also think the pervasive nature of tolerance, equality, and diversity are just as evil as fucking.

Language and Your Kids

First I read an interesting post by a friend of mine on MyLot about his distaste for “text speak” i.e. LOL, ROLF, XMAS 2MRO. Then I heard a very interesting bit on NPR this morning about kids and cursing and it got me to wondering about how I am going to deal with the subject of language when the baby is older. After pondering the situation for a while I came to the conclusion I speak a lot more languages than I give myself credit for. I have my everyday vernacular, I have the high etiquette I use in the necessary social situations, and I am semi fluent in “text speak” While all of them are based in English, they are distinctive languages each with their appropriate forum.

I agree that everyone needs to learn the high etiquette of social speak. I disagree with the notion that it is the only language that matters. I also disagree with the notion of censuring kids who use any other version of English when high etiquette social speak isn’t necessary. Just because an adult can’t make heads or tails of “text speak” or forgotten they were once kids who had their own vulgar vernacular that included controversial words like neat, damn, awesome, suck, fly, groovy, rad, and cool. While “Biatch” and “Ho” are words I could do without hearing, this generation has however given up most of the derogatory terms used for race that I don’t think I need to list. Read more of this Parenting Magazine Article