Kids and F-Bombs

This column was first published here on December 8, 2010.

Edited versions were subsequently published,with permission of the author,

in print and online editions of community newspapers across Chicago.

It used to be a bar of soap was the enemy; not of the clean body, but of the dirty mouth.

In decades past, swear words were not acceptable adult language; and if a child should utter one of George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," he or she would know that punishment would follow—if an adult, particularly a parent, overheard. A swat to the backside was easier to tolerate than the dreaded bar of soap. If you were lucky it was a mild bar of Ivory; if not, it could be Lava.

Somewhere along the line, maybe when parents decided to be “buddies” with their children, washing your child’s mouth out with soap was deemed cruel and unusual punishment

To be quite honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Is it cruel? I don’t know because I don’t know if it does physical harm to a child. That’s unacceptable

So it seems now that the fear of punishment for using dirty words is gone, so is the restraint from refraining to do, by children!

A friend of mine---a teacher---recently went back to teaching very young children after being out of the classroom for a number of years. She told me she was surprised to hear the filth coming out of the mouths of young children in 2010.

It reminded me of something that occurred about a decade ago at St. Joseph School in Summit, when my daughters were students there.

One day a five-year-old boy opened his mouth and dropped an F-bomb in the kindergarten; and that single act sent shock waves throughout the school. Within a day, everyone knew about it and was discussing it in hushed tones. Teachers and parents alike were discussing how to handle the situation and deal with the little boy with the dirty mouth.

The incident was even discussed by the School Board after the principal announced the incident in a solemn tone.

I thought then and I still think that it speaks well of the school that there was such shock over the incident. It sent a good signal that such behavior is not tolerated, that children are held to appropriately high standards.

But a decade later, would there still be shock? I don’t know.

And what do we make of all this? Are today’s foul-mouthed children a weather vane of our times, pointing in the direction of ever-declining moral standards?

Or as my husband asks, is it something else? Is it that “f**k” is the new “heck”?

That’s his simplified, Southwest Side version of an observation put forth by many sociolinguists and others in academia: that language is every bit as alive as the people who use it---and that as it evolves along with its users, the meaning and strength of words change.

As he points out, words considered relatively mild or even tame in 2010: heck, creep, dork, and so forth---were a century ago Grade A curse words confined to the locker room and never, ever uttered in polite society or mixed company.

So are today’s little F-bombardiers a sign of weakening morality or nothing more than the normal evolution of language? Perhaps both.

But I still think there’s something to be said for a bar of soap.

Agreed?

See you next week…

Joan Hadac is a Chicago news/feature reporter, editor and columnist.
Read her online at www.citymomchicago.blogspot.com