What Would Happen If You Just Let Kids Swear?
This is What Would Happen If, a close examination of mundane hypothetical situations. Each week, we look at something that you could do but probably never would, and take it to its logical endpoint. This week: What would happen if you just let kids cuss?
Bad words, frankly, have gotten a bad rap. For as long as there's been language there has been a certain subset of vulgarities, preciously guarded over and deemed For Emergency Use Only — if at all. Within the past few years, however, popular psychology has come around on the issue of swearing: It's good now. Or, at least, for adults it is.
Largely, our cultural guideposts for cussing have moved to the point where you can utter, "Shit, piss, fuck," in the office and not immediately face punishment. In some office cultures, namely that of the young, "laid-back" and tech-focused, opting not to swear could be considered a fault — uptightness running up against a strict requirement that people loosen up.
But when it comes to children, our laws, and by extension cultural norms, are firmly seated in the past. (Your feelings on sharing this article with a child would be proof positive of that.) Obscenity laws here in the US, ratings systems and a general cultural push to "watch your language" all reinforce the idea that swearing is bad for young minds. The reality is, kids are going to hear the bad words from someone, somewhere, and they're going to repeat them. So what happens if you just let them?
To find out just how corrupting an influence words could possibly be, we spoke with Timothy Jay, professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College Of Liberal Arts, who has spent decades researching and writing about swearing. In his view, well, who gives a fuck?
"It's fairly universal, not only among what we used to call primitives — there are certain things you can't talk about out of superstition," says Jay. "But wherever you find organized religion you find this control over language."
This idea, that swearing is bad, isn't rooted in decades of child psychology or even hard-won received wisdom on raising a child, explains Jay, but rather is an echo from what was once the sole moral authority: The church.
"We scientists run against an extremely potent cultural assumption, coming out of religion, that children need to be protected and that this language is harmful," he says. "This is an assumption, really an untested assumption, that children are naive and need protection."
That isn't to say that we should treat children like adults, but Jay argues that when it comes to language, it's good and healthy to let young ones express themselves. It's what separates us from the rest of the Animal Kingdom. And it's something you just can't fight.
"Every child learns how to swear. To be competent in English, and to understand context, every kid hears this stuff," he says. "We all have the same emotions, regardless of how you phrase anger and frustration. This is normal. For kids to swear is normal."
Of course, normal kids do all kinds of dumb bullshit that ends up hurting them. They eat dirt. They don't wash their hands. They pick their nose and scabs. They stick stuff where they shouldn't. Why would using bad language be any different? Well, unlike eating dirt or being unsanitary or otherwise just a general danger to themselves, saying bad words is a vital developmental tool.
When children are young, Jay explains, they only have so many tools to express their anger or frustration. They'll scream and kick and bite and hold their breath. "When you watch an infant express anger, you kinda see what animals do," he says. It's only when a child start to use their words that they stop this kind of behavior.
"At the point where they can say 'I hate you,' or they can say 'You're stupid,' or 'You're a poopy head,' that replaces the primitive with a mature expression of anger or frustration," says Jay. "As you progress from infancy to adulthood you'll see swearing, emotional expression become symbolic. That's the evolutionary advantage of this."
Under this understanding, swearing is a tool. It's a way to express emotion, and letting your child express their emotions is a pretty crucial skill when it comes to interacting with other humans. Life, as you can guess, often requires you to accurately relay how you're feeling to others. Letting a child experiment with swearing will help them learn how to do that.
"Emotional expression, especially with offensive words let me vent, and it conveys immediately how I feel to somebody else," says Jay. "That's what animals can't do."
While Jay acknowledges that strong language and verbal abuse can lead to violence, he's almost never seen it happen. "I've recorded over 10,000 people, I've never recorded, of all those thousands of people we've watched swear and listen to swear in public, we've never seen it turn into anything ugly," he says. "My conclusion is that most uses of swear words are inconsequential or virtually innocuous."
In Jay's view, letting your child swear is generally a good thing, But you still need to make sure your child doesn't turn into a shithead.
"I think at the core of this, if you're a parent, it's teaching your kid how to deal with emotions. It doesn't really matter what they say, the more important thing is why they said it," he says.
"If you're just dealing with the surface of the words, you're not dealing with it, you're not being a responsible parent. You're not helping them if you're being 'cool' about what they say."
