I’ve never heard more different explanations for anything parents tell kids than why they shouldn’t swear. Every parent I know forbids their children to swear, and yet no two of them have the same justification. It’s clear most start with not wanting kids to swear, then make up the reason afterward.
This sounds like a challenge. Would you prefer your children to not swear; and if yes, why?
My reasoning would be that I want my children to be successful (for both altruistic and selfish reasons), and I believe that a habit of swearing is on average harmful to social skills.
Disclaimer: There are situations where swearing is the right thing to do, so it would be optimal to swear exactly in these situations. But it would be difficult for a child to determine these situations precisely; and from the simple strategies, “never swear” (which often develops towards “don’t swear in presence of adult people or someone who would inform them”) seems very good.
I like to be around people who don’t constantly emphasize their every word, making it hard to tell when something is actually important. Since swearing is a verbal marker of importance, its casual overuse is like shouting all the time; it’s very wearying. And, lest I be accused of rationalising, I do not only apply this to children, but have also asked my wife to cut back on swearing.
As a side note, Americans are very loud, both in the literal sense of putting more decibels behind their voices, and in their over-reliance on swearing. I think you’ve fallen into the bad equilibrium that comes about when everyone has an incentive to be a little louder than the next guy, and there’s no cost to being so.
I like to be around people who don’t constantly emphasize their every word, making it hard to tell when something is actually important. Since swearing is a verbal marker of importance, its casual overuse is like shouting all the time; it’s very wearying. And, lest I be accused of rationalising, I do not only apply this to children, but have also asked my wife to cut back on swearing.
Thank you for this. I’ve been wondering reflectively why I’ve been swearing more frequently lately, and I just realized that it’s to make sure my voice is heard. I’ll try to attack the root of this and instead get my attention-validation from having good things to say rather than saying them most crassly.
Would you prefer your children to not swear; and if yes, why?
I’m almost sure this is mainly a status thing. Frequent swearing is perceived as crass, a lower-class practice, and so aspirational parents encourage their children not to. This intent then proceeds to backfire when children develop their own social networks: status relations among children and young teenagers are quite different from adult ones, and swearing in this context is often a marker of independence and perceived maturity. This gradually unwinds during the teenage years as swearing in the presence of adults becomes more socially acceptable and adult-style status relations start to assert themselves.
The only thing that confuses me about this model is the lack of countersignaling, but perhaps children of that age can’t reliably parse signaling at that level of indirection. Or maybe I just don’t remember enough childhood social dynamics.
That you know what a policy of punishing swearing develops into (“don’t swear in presence of adult people or someone who would inform them”) shows that you have the ability to think forwards into the consequences, but also hints at some sort of stopping, perhaps motivated (because hey, finding better solutions is hard).
Clearly, you also have the ability to reason a bit further: What sort of microsociety does the above behavior encourage once they get into high school, where the majority of their perceivable world is a miniature scheduled wildland?
When I was six and used swear words in front of my school principal (hey, when you spend half the day in the principal’s office for the 13th time, you kinda get used to someone), he later brought it up with my parents (though I vaguely recall it wasn’t in any negative manner). My parents immediately started reprimanding me, naturally, but he stopped them, and afterwards they changed strategies based on his advice and some insight they gained from reading more research and books on related topics.
I’m certainly glad they did, in retrospect, because in the twisted social environment that high schools are, a good swearing strategy can be extremely effective. I don’t know how widely this’d work, YMMV and all that, but a “leave me alone” usually didn’t get prospective bullies off my back. If I then followed up with a steady gaze and a “leave me the fuck alone” (yes, I know, but that’s how 14-year-olds talked when I was there), now suddenly they’d grow much more cautious and start re-evaluating whether they should still try to play their little status game and get their cheap fun, when someone who rarely ever swears had just signaled to them that shit got serious.
All in all, “never swear” seems to me like it never actually works, and takes much more effort to attempt (by punishing every single instance of swearing that you can find, even though you know you can only find a small fraction of them) than other strategies like teaching “swearing gets less useful and powerful each time you use it, so if you always keep it as a reserve it’ll be that much more effective”.
Oh, I was not specific enough. What I wanted to write is that a habit of swearing is harmful to your social skills after you leave the school. Imagine a person at a job interview saying: “Yeah, I know the fucking Java, but NetBeans is gay, and if you ain’t doing unit tests like all the time, you are seriously retarded, man.” ;-)
Probably no one would do this intentionally, but the problem is, if you get a habit of swearing, then sometimes a word or two slips through, often unnoticed (by you; but your audience is shocked). At some moment this happened to me (no, not at a job interview, at least I think so), and after getting a feedback I decided to be extra careful. Which I would want to teach my children. I was very lucky to get that feedback, because most people assume that others are well aware of all the words they use.
Since I don’t have nor plan on having children I actually haven’t given it much thought. I posted this because it gives a good example of rationalization in action.
-Paul Graham in The Lies We Tell Kids
This sounds like a challenge. Would you prefer your children to not swear; and if yes, why?
My reasoning would be that I want my children to be successful (for both altruistic and selfish reasons), and I believe that a habit of swearing is on average harmful to social skills.
Disclaimer: There are situations where swearing is the right thing to do, so it would be optimal to swear exactly in these situations. But it would be difficult for a child to determine these situations precisely; and from the simple strategies, “never swear” (which often develops towards “don’t swear in presence of adult people or someone who would inform them”) seems very good.
I like to be around people who don’t constantly emphasize their every word, making it hard to tell when something is actually important. Since swearing is a verbal marker of importance, its casual overuse is like shouting all the time; it’s very wearying. And, lest I be accused of rationalising, I do not only apply this to children, but have also asked my wife to cut back on swearing.
As a side note, Americans are very loud, both in the literal sense of putting more decibels behind their voices, and in their over-reliance on swearing. I think you’ve fallen into the bad equilibrium that comes about when everyone has an incentive to be a little louder than the next guy, and there’s no cost to being so.
Thank you for this. I’ve been wondering reflectively why I’ve been swearing more frequently lately, and I just realized that it’s to make sure my voice is heard. I’ll try to attack the root of this and instead get my attention-validation from having good things to say rather than saying them most crassly.
I’m almost sure this is mainly a status thing. Frequent swearing is perceived as crass, a lower-class practice, and so aspirational parents encourage their children not to. This intent then proceeds to backfire when children develop their own social networks: status relations among children and young teenagers are quite different from adult ones, and swearing in this context is often a marker of independence and perceived maturity. This gradually unwinds during the teenage years as swearing in the presence of adults becomes more socially acceptable and adult-style status relations start to assert themselves.
The only thing that confuses me about this model is the lack of countersignaling, but perhaps children of that age can’t reliably parse signaling at that level of indirection. Or maybe I just don’t remember enough childhood social dynamics.
Or you could, y’know, try to think of a better way.
That you know what a policy of punishing swearing develops into (“don’t swear in presence of adult people or someone who would inform them”) shows that you have the ability to think forwards into the consequences, but also hints at some sort of stopping, perhaps motivated (because hey, finding better solutions is hard).
Clearly, you also have the ability to reason a bit further: What sort of microsociety does the above behavior encourage once they get into high school, where the majority of their perceivable world is a miniature scheduled wildland?
When I was six and used swear words in front of my school principal (hey, when you spend half the day in the principal’s office for the 13th time, you kinda get used to someone), he later brought it up with my parents (though I vaguely recall it wasn’t in any negative manner). My parents immediately started reprimanding me, naturally, but he stopped them, and afterwards they changed strategies based on his advice and some insight they gained from reading more research and books on related topics.
I’m certainly glad they did, in retrospect, because in the twisted social environment that high schools are, a good swearing strategy can be extremely effective. I don’t know how widely this’d work, YMMV and all that, but a “leave me alone” usually didn’t get prospective bullies off my back. If I then followed up with a steady gaze and a “leave me the fuck alone” (yes, I know, but that’s how 14-year-olds talked when I was there), now suddenly they’d grow much more cautious and start re-evaluating whether they should still try to play their little status game and get their cheap fun, when someone who rarely ever swears had just signaled to them that shit got serious.
All in all, “never swear” seems to me like it never actually works, and takes much more effort to attempt (by punishing every single instance of swearing that you can find, even though you know you can only find a small fraction of them) than other strategies like teaching “swearing gets less useful and powerful each time you use it, so if you always keep it as a reserve it’ll be that much more effective”.
Oh, I was not specific enough. What I wanted to write is that a habit of swearing is harmful to your social skills after you leave the school. Imagine a person at a job interview saying: “Yeah, I know the fucking Java, but NetBeans is gay, and if you ain’t doing unit tests like all the time, you are seriously retarded, man.” ;-)
Probably no one would do this intentionally, but the problem is, if you get a habit of swearing, then sometimes a word or two slips through, often unnoticed (by you; but your audience is shocked). At some moment this happened to me (no, not at a job interview, at least I think so), and after getting a feedback I decided to be extra careful. Which I would want to teach my children. I was very lucky to get that feedback, because most people assume that others are well aware of all the words they use.
Since I don’t have nor plan on having children I actually haven’t given it much thought. I posted this because it gives a good example of rationalization in action.