Just an initial heads up here… if you have a problem with people talking about the “F word” and actually spelling it out in their piece, then read no further…

Using those more “colorful” words in our wonderful human languages is an adventure in cultural norms, with different expectations for different segments of the community… youth versus adults, men versus women. At the top of the patriarchal pecking order, men of course are generally allowed to swear, expected to even among each other, as a sign of their privilege, but women (at least in the presence of men) and kids (at least in the presence of adults) not so much. But certainly among me and my friends (when I was young) and among my kids (when they still were youths), swearing was one way of trying on adult behavior and trying to experience the coolness and swagger of being an adult.

Speaking of patriarchy, there is a whole patriarchal context of sex and power underlying the expletive “fuck”, but I’ll get to that a little later.

When my partner Sally and I became parents, I don’t recall actually having a discussion about it, but I made the effort not to swear. Sally had never been much for using expletives herself, though it never bothered her if I or others did. I found that, rather than trying to maintain two sets of vocabularies depending on whether I was in earshot of our little ones, that I just pretty much eliminated swearing from my lexicon.

I replaced the more “adult” scatological terms was the ubiquitous “poop” to describe bowel movements and dirty diapers, a big logistical area for parental types with little ones. There is no greater introduction to the thrills of parenthood than changing a toddler’s “poopy” diaper on the cold hard tile in a toilet stall of a men’s room (not yet equipped with a baby changing table).

So our son Eric, who was precocious and always well-spoken and facile with the language, started experimenting with swearing at the small private school he attended through third grade. His working premise was that it should be okay as long as he was not swearing “at someone” but simply describing the intensity of his feeling about something. I think he certainly enjoyed the shock value these words had on his peers who were not using them. But the principal of his private school (a progressive educator later to start the alternative charter school Sally worked at and our daughter Emma attended) was not a fan of his swearing and had several discussions with him about it.

Back at home, Eric remembers around that time downloading a cover of the song “I Will Survive” with the word “fuck” in it and his mom hearing it playing on his computer in his room and sharing with him an “I statement” that she did not like hearing those words. Simply that, but not forbidding him or threatening any punishment.

In fourth grade Eric transitioned to a larger public school and a new circle of friends more comfortable with using those saltier words, particular when they were speaking just to each other. He recalls feeling he had to censor himself around us and wishing he could speak more “normally” around his parents.

Always trying to push the envelope and test the waters, Eric shared with his mom that his friends were starting to swear a lot and he was curious what she thought about that. It was a testament to the kind of relationship we had with our kid that he would be comfortable broaching the subject. He and his mom had a great discussion, including on the issues of peer pressure and how it is a difficult thing.

She shared with Eric that she and I had made the conscious effort when he and his sister Emma were born to take those words out of our normal vocabulary. We figured best to raise our kids without them hearing swearing from us, thinking that our fairly precocious kids would be less likely to embarrass themselves by using inappropriate words in front of teachers and other adults, but understanding also that at some point he and his sister would have to make their own choice about their personal vocabulary.

As I already said, Eric has always been pretty verbally gifted, and he managed to maintain a second vocabulary for talking with his parents and other adults of our ilk. Eric at that age was still spending a lot of effort to maintain a certain persona or façade with adults, to make sure we perceived him as a well mannered kid. But we had the occasion or two to hear him talk to his friends, maybe on the phone, and heard the alternate rhetoric laced with those powerful “adult” words.

Eric was the first grandchild, male, good looking and bright with all these adoring parents, grandparents and other extend family members of previous generations. I don’t think we realized at the time, when we would go on with our friends or share with relatives about how talented he was, how much pressure that was putting on him to conform to this high standard. I think this probably contributed to him going through a phase, particularly when he was starting to crash and burn in school, of carefully manicuring a persona of himself that he presented to us that was partially genuine, where that was effective, and partially not.

But over the next few years of his emerging adolescence, Eric rethought his strategy. If nothing else, being less than genuine was just too complicated and less and less satisfying as he continuing to develop his own voice and a caring self, which included trying to relate to people in his life, peers and adults, more genuinely.

When the topic of swearing came up in one of our kitchen table discussions about “life, the universe and everything”, he admitted that he swore a lot talking with his friends but censored it out when talking to us and other adults. Then he asked if we would be uncomfortable if he used more of his “full” vocabulary when talking to us. That led to a very honest discussion and his mom sharing with him that maybe salting the word “fuck” in here or there could convey intensity, but when she hears the word laced into every sentence that she felt it represented a poverty of usage of the English language.

Now Eric and his sister are both young adults, the two of them plus their mom and I were all sitting around that same kitchen table again the other day, and I brought up the subject of swearing, as I was beginning to recall the various incidents so I could include them in this piece.

We had a long involved discussion about the word “fuck” and all its connotations in the context of the continuing patriarchal threads of our culture. In my thinking, the implication of “fuck you”, “fucked over”, “fucked up” or “getting screwed” is that the sexual act is something bad that men do to women, defiling, demeaning and damaging them in the process. Because in classic patriarchal context, a chaste, unmarried woman is valuable property, but once she has had sexual intercourse with a man she is somehow “damaged goods”. Sally agreed, having grown up in a very articulate and socially-conscious family where they have great sensitivity about the connotation of all words. She thinks that most people have no clue about the negative patriarchal context of that word.

Eric’s current thinking is that the proliferation of the use of the word is de-vulgarizing it, taking away or at least minimizing all those patriarchal connotations, with it being used now more as an adjective than a verb, disagreeing with us that it still conveys that kernel of 5000-year-old patriarchal conventional thinking.

If nothing else, my family certainly has some provocative discussions around the kitchen table!