Swearing and Children

How old do children have to be before you can start using swear words in a shared conversation?

This isn’t a question I am asking facetiously. This is an issue that is part of a more general confusion of mine about swear words, the part they play in social interaction and the rate at which we ask children to grow up.

The initial impetus for considering this dilemma came from watching the trailer for Kick Ass, the new comic book adaptation that is hitting cinemas this week. In it, an 11-year-old character named Hit Girl bursts into a room full of villains and spews out the line, ‘OK you cunts, let’s see what you can do now.’

Now in my mind, no 11-year-old should be saying that word. I don’t say this out of some kind of moral outrage with a loud harrumph about decency and standards. The issue I have with this being said by someone so young is that they haven’t yet earned the right to say it.

No 11-year-old has ever met a real-life cunt or really knows how much of a cunt some people can be. This is because they just haven’t had the life experience that is tied into exclaiming that word, a word that is said as a catharsis in order to relieve oneself of the accumulated annoyance at the aggravating tendencies and self-absorbed behaviour of other people.

I’d say that you only meet a proper, 24-carat, state-of-the-art cunt after you graduate and start working. Up until then, you will have only come across wankers, assholes and knobheads, people who are annoying but essentially benign. A cunt is someone who has had all the joy of life drained out of them over a long period of time. They have reached a point in their life that they are so devoid of mirth that their only enjoyment comes through denying other people any kind of happiness. Which is why they act like cunts.

Although swearing creates scandal and is often seen as being crude and boorish, it also acts as a means of social control by imparting a judgment on those transgressing established boundaries. A swear word properly selected and purposely directed has the effect of bringing offenders back in line by letting them know that their behaviour is unwarranted and out of order. For instance, I have been a prick many times in my life but on being called out as being a prick, I’ve been quick to realise that I have been acting like a prick. And no-one likes having a prick for company.

But in today’s society, swear words are tossed around too liberally. This is why I think there should be age limits on certain swear words. This is so that by the time you reach the suggested threshold you will have gained the life experience to use them correctly and on their proper targets. For instance, piss and shit come after you reach your teenage years. Fuck and asshole are allowed after your fifteenth birthday and on hitting 18, the age at which you become an adult and have to face up to important responsibilities, then and only then can you call someone else a cocksucker. Deal?

Image by Antonella Beccaria courtesy of Flickr