My father was born in 1946, my mom in 1950. Both of them heard four letter words in their neighborhoods and from relatives as children. However, it was usually the case that while men swore among one another, they rarely, if never, cursed in front of ladies. Ladies, of course, NEVER swore, unless they were "trashy."
My sister once told my mother .....Daddy said he had a house on a dam,or a dam on a house, or something about a dam house
But we never heard him say any bad words, besides once in a while he would let the word "bastard" come out.......
and, he got particularly mad at we kids if we ever used the word "queer".....of course we would call each other that and we had no idea what it meant......LOL
I miss that innocence we once had....when our parents are all gone, it'll just be us here, trying to keep on with some of their values.....
I LOVE YOU MOM AND DAD!
I was born in 1945, my brother in 1947, my husband in 1943...all of us from middle America of that time....my dad was a Browne and Sharppe Marchine operator(in dads jargon, that was a screw machine operator)at the Sunbeam factory...a hard job, working in a hot factory...my husbands dad was some sort of machine repair man...both my hubbys dad and my dad served in WW11, came home, started up their lives again with a family, tried hard to make a living, and used coarse language...and they should never have to apologize for that...
Coarse and strong language was just the way men often talked among themselves...but you are absolutely right...most women did not swear, and the men rarely, if ever swore in front of the women...it was just not the gentlemanly thing to do...
At my house there just wasnt trashy language. It was considered something stupid.