Often, my brother and I ride in our mother's car to go places, such as our grandparents' house, vacations, and other things. Most recently, I was going to go on a tour of Murrow (the school my brother currently attends), so our mother figured she could just drive both of us to school (since the tour started at the same time as my brother's first class). As we were waiting on the sidewalk for her, my brother started telling me a funny story about something that happened during class. I listened, as his stories are always entertaining. However, he happened to use the F-word (along with other curses) quite a lot in his recounting. Now, this is completely normal for a boy his age – he's sixteen -, but we live in a neighborhood with lots of families with small children. And my brother has a really loud voice.
I've come to wonder – when did it become socially acceptable to use foul language in front of kids, some as young as 1 year old?
Well, I did some more thinking, and came up with this reason: People associate age with immaturity.
Let me explain. Earlier, I said it was normal for a 16-year-old boy to use curse words. This is because cursing is often grouped together with being too immature to handle having conversations in a mature, adult way. Cursing is a lazy way to attempt making a point. It's not properly thought out, and requires minimal concentration to come up with. It's there purely for shock factor, as well as emphasis. This isn't a bad thing, though. We are, as humans, naturally lazy when it comes to casual speech (saying things like “um”, “uh”, “like”, etc.), and this is not a fault. However, when cursing is frequently said, it becomes generalized as being TOO lazy – or, in other words, too immature.
And because teenagers are the ones who say it most often, THEY become part of the “immature” factor – when, in fact, most of them aren't. It's just that the ones who aren't are the ones who are quiet.
Society then writes off this behavior, saying “They'll grow out of it”, and “It's just a phase – it's perfectly normal!” The problem is, it has nothing to do with age – it has to do with character. If you are loud and rambunctious enough to be cursing in front of young children, I do NOT want you sitting in an office work-place making big decisions for a huge corporation. But when adults excuse these teenagers because of their age, they're doing EXACTLY that.
Now, my brother isn't like that. He's nice, and he rarely ever curses in public. But other kids do. And it needs to be stopped.
They need to be disciplined.
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