Is the f-word now not only acceptable, but appropriate for high-class events? And does part of the problem stem from a general lack of attention to manners, especially in child-rearing?
One night at the opera with my father, I noticed that the respectable-looking, rather dowdy middle-aged couple sitting next to me began to almost vibrate with excitement when the curtain rose. Evidently the set struck them as rather spectacular. "Oh, this is gonna be so f***ing great!" exclaimed the wife to her husband, who nodded benignly in agreement. While I was happy for them and their enthusiasm, I couldn't help but wonder: Since when did the f-word become so acceptable in what used to be called polite society that we now can even hear it at the opera?......there's a...disinclination to prevent actual children from behaving like foulmouthed banshees. Rachel Simmons' 2002 bestseller Odd Girl Out marshaled page after page of depressing tales of female adolescent cruelty...but never suggested that the perpetrators were simply badly brought up brats ill-suited for polite society.
Instead, Simmons argued, "girls in our society are not encouraged to express their anger, and so it goes underground" oozing up in toxic little bubbles of middle-school sniping and ostracism. I'd say the real problem is that girls (and boys) are encouraged all too extravagantly in our society to express anger from an early age. Anyone who's seen a preschooler smack his mother or scream in a restaurant or push another child down at the playground only to be earnestly asked by the concerned parent about what feelings led to such behavior knows this is true.
Ms. Seipp isn't the only one who thinks parents are falling down the job. Muriel Grey writes that children who are not taught proper manners and behavior are seriously handicapped in life:
...we fail to take this as seriously as we ought. The bad manners of children, particularly of deprived, working-class and benefit-class children, is so often the subject of middle-class contempt, but very rarely examined with any real pity or concern. Just as we know full well that a great many children, leaving poor schools with no qualifications, are not stupid, but have just been sold short, we must also accept that the absence of anyone teaching them how to be charming, friendly and considerate, does not mean that they do not have the innate capacity to be so. Its a sign that society at large does not consider the possession of good manners sufficiently important...
My parents certainly had no qualms about enforcing manners. I once saw a 10-year-old kid in Target hit his mom on the arm because she wouldn't buy him a toy. He told he hated her as he slapped her. Had I ever done that - or used the f-word - to my mom, I wouldn't be here writing this post today.
Posted by kswygert at March 31, 2005 10:55 AM