MetaChat - Do you swear in front of your parents?

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19 May 2006

Do you swear in front of your parents? →[More:] There are a few naughty words I can say in front of my mom -- "damn" and "ass" are okay. "Shit" I use more sparingly, and when I do it makes her giggle uncomfortable. I never, ever say "fuck" in front of my mother, because I'm afraid that even though I'm in my 30s, she'd spank me.

You?

post by: mudpuppie at: 13:28 | 33 comments

All the fucking time. Although "fuck" used to be the only taboo one. My little brother blew the lid off that one while I was in college, though.

Otherwise, all the rest (minus maybe "cunt"—though that one's now fair game) have been acceptable around my parents' house for many, many years.

posted by interrobang 19 May | 13:31

Yeah, but not as robustly as with friends. They used to get irritated when I said 'fuck,' but they've gotten used to it, and they always cursed in front of me.

posted by jonmc 19 May | 13:35

When I was six or seven my parents explained to me that some words were very tricky to use without making people very uncomfortable or hurting their feelings. They recommended I hold off on saying them till I was a grownup; by that point, they said, I'd have it mostly figured out.

I'm still wondering when that's supposed to happen.

My dad and I were in a (very minor, but scary) car accident a few years ago. We both said "fuck" then. Repeatedly.

posted by tangerine 19 May | 13:36

Hell, I swear at my parents.

My younger brother was the one who broke that barrier, too.

posted by me3dia 19 May | 13:36

I have sort of devolved into this.

The coup de gras was me visiting my mom down in CA with a new car, a station wagon. We were driving down Hawthrone Blvd. when the back door flew open, and an ice chest, sleeping bags, my Nikon camera (in the bag) and other things flew out onto the road.

I said OH SHIT and pulled into a lot and fetched the stuff. . my mom just sitting in the car because she's too old to exert herself much.

Our daughter, on the other hand, swears in front of us, usually in unguarded moments, like if she makes a goof. It's perfectly OK with me.

posted by danf 19 May | 13:36

Not really. I think I've said "fuck" in front of my mum maybe 3 times ever. When we were back in NZ the other month, I was talking to mr. g and my mum, and I said something about "what the fuck were they thinking" and carried on speaking, and it was only a minute or so later that my brain caught up with my mouth and I was all like "huh, I just swore in front of mum and she didn't say anything".

posted by gaspode 19 May | 13:38

The coup de gras was me visiting my mom down in CA with a new car, a station wagon. We were driving down Hawthrone Blvd. when the back door flew open, and an ice chest, sleeping bags, my Nikon camera (in the bag) and other things flew out onto the road.

That seems like more of an "oh, ffffuuuuuuuudgge!" moment to me.

posted by interrobang 19 May | 13:38

My mom was the one who would get angry over cursing the most, but when she was frustrated with me she'd occasionally say 'For fuck's sake.." My Dad, being a native New Yorker was very comfortable with the entire forbidden lexicon, although he used them more sparingly than most, for best effect.

posted by jonmc 19 May | 13:41

Hell, I swear at my parents.

I came in here to make the exact same comment.

posted by PinkStainlessTail 19 May | 13:50

Yes, I do swear in front of my mother sometimes...Most words, but not that frequently. If I get going on too good a run, she'll tell me not to cuss so much. Then she'll quote my paternal grandfather, whom I disagree with: "Swearing is the mark of an uneducated mind". Uh huh. Whatever fuckface.

The weirdest part is that while I was raised pretty much outside of any church, she doesn't like it when I blaspheme. Which I find odd, because I don't really think I can blaspheme, considering my status as a church outsider.

posted by richat 19 May | 13:52

I don't, except during my very occasional slip ups. They just don't like hearing it from anyone.

I've managed to never swear around my nieces and nephew. One time my little niece, then aged about seven, told me that her mother and my sister sometimes said bad words. I said that likely she'd swear during moments of stress when she got older too. She said, "Oh no. I would want to set a better example for my children."

posted by Orange Swan 19 May | 13:53

Oh yeah. Constantly.

My mother loves to tell the story of how when I was two, I was out playing in the sandbox with my eight year-old cousin. He came inside and whispered to my mom: "Specklet said the f-word!"

posted by Specklet 19 May | 13:55

That's so cute that your mom calls you Specklet!

/kids

posted by richat 19 May | 13:56

No, I don't. Well, not much. Something just seems funny about it, I guess.

posted by tommasz 19 May | 13:58

Absolutely not.

The strongest word I ever heard my Mother utter was "Piffle." Which is pretty funny to hear because she's really upset - upset enough to curse! And she says "Piffle! PIFFLE PIFFLE PIFFLE PIFFLE."

posted by rainbaby 19 May | 14:14

My dad never curses. I never cursed in front of him, and still don't, except once when I was excoriating my brother about a potential life-and-death situation that he didn't seem to realize the gravity of. I was so angry, that I don't really have a clear memory of what I said.

posted by matildaben 19 May | 14:17

I swear like a sailor. Fuck this, fuck that, fuck you, fuck him, all of that. And yup, I swear infront of and to my parents. Where do you think I learned it from?

posted by puke & cry 19 May | 14:18

[Rainbaby, my mother's strongest swear word is "crappydoodle."]

posted by mudpuppie 19 May | 14:21

My folks both enjoy the occasional profanity (my father more than my mother), but neither one is quite as profane as I am (in terms of severity, not frequency--both are probably more frequently profane than I am, but then again, they're retired). As per usual, I try to respect the other person's comfort levels.

I wouldn't use, say, 'cunt' or 'bitch' in front of my folks, but I very rarely say those words at all (pretty much only with quotation marks around 'em).

There are a few words, though, that I use not-infrequently, but that I'd be reluctant to use around my parents: 'cocksucker,' 'pigfucker,' that kinda thing.

posted by box 19 May | 14:26

"Pigfucker" reaminds me of a good example of life with my family:

Me, my mother, my aunt, and the guy I was dating at the time were all playing Hearts. Ted got a little nasty and passed my aunt what I can only assume was the queen of spades and two high hearts. She turned to him and said "Why you little pigfucker!"

It was funny and we all laughed, but he refused to play cards with us again. His loss, says I.

posted by Specklet 19 May | 14:41

My mother curses far more than I do; my dad only occasionally. But I have no compunction about cursing in front of either of them.

On a related note, I don't actually curse that much. I still remember the conversation I had with my dad in second grade, where I asked him if I was allowed to curse. He said that I could if I was very angry, and that stuck with me. Although I occasionally drop a curse into conversation, more often than not I save it for when I am mightily pissed.

posted by amro 19 May | 14:42

Yes. Including the F-word, but I try to keep all swearing in front of them to a respectable minimum.

posted by safetyfork 19 May | 14:42

I am much more cognizant about swearing in front of my students than my parents. My parents actually don't swear that much, but they used to do drugs in front of us, so I don't think we ever particularly held back on the word use. I do remember that smoking pot with my mom for the first time was kind of a "noticable moment" though.

With my students, I am pretty careful, although I did say "dog shit" in front of the classroom last week. The context was Kant's aesthetic theory, and one of the student's contention that everything in the natural world was inherently beautiful.

posted by mdn 19 May | 14:53

Not much, no. And not at all until I noticed that my younger siblings weren't quite so reticent... [I swear all the time in other situations, though.]

posted by ubersturm 19 May | 15:05

Swear in front of my parents? Oh, hell, no.

posted by deadcowdan 19 May | 15:15

I swear like a sailor. Fuck this, fuck that, fuck you, fuck him, all of that.

Yep, me too. Although with my mother I'll occasionally say, "oh! Pardon my language," when I realize the cursing has reached critical mass. My dad & his wife swear all the time, and as for it being the sign of an uneducated mind, dear ol' da has a BA in philosophy, is a shrink (the doctorin' kind), and reads Heidegger for fun, so you can stick it up your arse and fuck off while you're about it. (thank you, Withnail and I)

posted by elizard 19 May | 15:36

My older brother swears in front of my folks sometimes, casually, but not very often. I swear very, very occasionally (like when I'm helping my mom get the garden shears down from their shelf in the basement and a box of knives upends itself, showering razor-sharp Henckels peelers and cleaves down on me).

Once, when I was in junior high, my mother was driving us to the orthodontist, when a particularly aggressive truck driver started honking and tailgating and bullying her out of the turn lane. She had trouble turning her neck in traffic, and would often ask my brother or me to look when she merged. This time she had a different request.

"Boys, could you please give that man the fuck you finger?"

posted by Hugh Janus 19 May | 15:44

While "peelers and cleaves" is a phrase I'll keep for other uses, it's not what I meant. "Cleavers;" think Hugh Beaumont as Ward, Barbara Billingsley as June, Tony Dow as Wally, and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver.

posted by Hugh Janus 19 May | 15:47

Hell, no.

That is to say, that my swearing is very, very rare. When I do use nasty language the impact is much better, I believe.

There was the time last summer when I spilled an entire gallon on paint on the 80 year old cypress planks of the porch. This stain would last for a generation, I thought. I impressed everyone present when I said, "I feel chagrined."

posted by sarah connor 19 May | 16:56

Fuck, sarah connor. That is impressive.

posted by mudpuppie 19 May | 17:02

I've been trying to get my adorable 90-year-old adopted mom to say "shit" for the past thirty years. She'll curse like a yenta in yiddish (including schmuck, which is a very dirty word), but not english. The more I try, the more bashful and giggly she gets. The closest she'll come is shitterine, which doesn't count, since it's just yiddish for cooking with a little bit of this and a little bit of that, sans recipe (not really a "dirty" word at all).

I said "fuck you" to my birth mother once when I was eight, and she had my so-called friends chase me down, drag me back (I'd run off after I'd said it), and proceeded to pull down my pants and spank me right in front of all my laughing friends (some friends). I never swore at or near her again, though; it was also the only time she ever spanked me.

posted by Pips 19 May | 17:30

Shit yeah. Where the fuck do y'all think I learned to swear? Not until I was in my mid-teens tho' when I said "shit" about something and she just got this little smile on her face and didn't reprimand me (funny how the scene is still very clear in my mind). We even call each other "bitch" when we're playing cribbage.

posted by deborah 19 May | 19:15

I swear in front of my mother all the time. One of her proudest accomplishments as a parent is that she managed to avoid saying "pigfucker" in front of me until I was eighteen. I guess once I was a legal adult, the gloves came off as she's said "pigfucker" on a near daily basis since.

I tend to swear AT my father more than in his general direction partly because I know he doesn't necessarily *like* it, but mostly because conversations with my father tend to make one scream "WHAT THE FUCK?" He's... crazy.

Never in front of my grandparents though. Some things are still sacred.

posted by grapefruitmoon 20 May | 13:09

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