Does swearing get more offensive as you get older?

Question

...or, I suppose another way of putting it :do we all turn into our parents?

Answer 1

My parents, or at least my father used swear words frequently, sometimes even in public, even though he was an Anglican priest. Experience has taught me that the most prissy about swear words are people who aspire to be upper middle class. The higher you are in the social scale, the more you're likely to swear without even thinking about it. Now is that snobbish or what? F***ing h***, get real.

Answer 2

Do we turn into our parents? In a sense I think we do. When I was younger I swore I would never be like my mom, and now that I am a mom, I find myself saying the same things she did. I am different of course, and times are different, but the basic values and ways of handling things are pretty much the same.
Do we get more intolerant of swearing? Yes, I think so. I used to swear for the shock value, and because it was "grown up" and cool. Now I tend to think people who swear have no manners and swearing is a way to get out of thinking of something intelligent to say. But sometimes only a swear word seems to fit the situation.

Answer 3

I have always found swearing to be offensive. I find myself judging a persons intelligence by the language they use. I know it's not always fair and know words are just that...words...but cannot help it when someone cannot even complete a sentence without using the f-word 3-4 times or more. And this in children! Shows very badly on the parents. I am turning into my parents slowly, but then mine never used swearing much. Don't know if this answered your question but thanks for letting me vent.

Answer 4

We all tend to turn into our parents. It's just one of those things; but even when I was younger I didn't like swearing (outside of the few sh-it, damn, hell). In a conversation with me, any *hard* words automatically bring the speaker's IQ down ten points and some people really can't afford the loss. It's becoming all too common when someone uses fvck as a verb, adverb and adjective all in the same sentance. There's so many other lovely words in the dictionary to use instead. Blessings.

Answer 5

It's just that the older you are, the less accustomed you are to swearing in a public setting. The way to think of it is:- say in the future you don't swear anymore but just punch someone in the mouth. You would complain about the kids always punching someone, but they would think that it was just the norm.

Answer 6

In the right place and in the right way, epithets are useful forms of communication - this is why they prevail. When we are young, we use epithets to belong to a group - and show how cool we are, but as we mature, we learn the best times to use them well.

But we also learn when they are inappropriate.

In some ways, I think it is inevitable that we emulate our parents - afterall, they were the ones who gave us our values - despite how rebellious we may be in our youth. So who else would be likely for us to become?

But I don't think we become their carbon copies - I think we discard the stuff that they were wrong about, and add our own experiences to form a moral code that spans generations.

Answer 7

Yes. Mind you I hope I will not turn into my mum. But I think swearing shows you have a poor vocabulary!

Answer 8

I find that gratuitous swearing is completely abhorrent to my ears. As far as when it's clever or necessary, swear on!

Answer 9

Read Oscar Wilde.

Answer 10

Older people just get more sensitive. Isn't that good?