Words can be an incitement to think less of children "disadvantaged" by circumstances over which they had no control, writes Kitty Holland.
I was six. I remember asking my father when his and my mother's wedding anniversary was. He told me they had never married. Thrown by this piece of information, I asked why not. "We didn't feel there was any need. We love each other and we love you and your brother, and a wedding is an awful lot of fuss to organise," he told me.
It should have been a sufficient answer. But, in 1977, I was horrified at the implications. I doubt I had heard the word "bastard" but on some childish level I understood that to have parents who were unmarried was something to be ashamed of.
It did not matter that my mother and father had been partners for almost a decade, and would continue to be for almost another. What shamed and embarrassed me was that they had had my brother, and me and had not had a wedding beforehand.
I went to a liberal, Protestant national school in Rathmines, where no one spoke much of sinning. There was some Bible-reading but religion was not high on the agenda - morals were rooted in the promotion of tolerance, behaving decently and being good to people. Words like "nigger" and "wog" were banned, with discussions about all humans being God's children.
And despite all of this, I remember clearly my terror of it being found out that my parents were not married, that I was "illegitimate".
I remember one lunch-break when I was about 10, sitting with my heart in my mouth, as two friends, Lisa and Karen, argued about what a "bastard" was. My stomach was clenched with terror as I sat in silence, hoping I would not be called upon to contribute in case I was caught.
I had not thought as far as to wonder what would happen if they found out I was indeed the personification of all these evils. They might have disowned me as a friend. They might have asked me what it was like to be such an exotic bird. They might not have cared. All I remember at the time was the terror that I might be caught, and the relief when I wasn't.
And I remember carrying that low-level terror with me for perhaps another two years until I realised in fact that three of my friends too were "illegitimate", and two of them were living with their single mums. I rarely see them now, but I recall them fondly as happy, kind, fun, intelligent, beautiful girls, loved and nurtured by their parents.
The sense of shame, I must stress, was not all-consuming by any means. Being "illegitimate" did not impinge enormously on my thoughts as a child. It was not a day-to-day concern. But it was there, always in the background, an issue I did not want to hear being discussed. And in my child's world the word "bastard" gave rise, quite simply, to a painful sense that I wished I was not one.
As a child, questions of morality are always black and white, right and wrong, with no scope for shades of grey. Choices are simple to a child. The things you do are either good or bad.
Life experience, one hopes, teaches us to understand the frailty of the human condition, to realise the choices we make might not be simple, that life can disappoint and hurt. And even our infallible parents, who may have embarked on a path together full of hope and optimism, can make mistakes. They may have had an unplanned pregnancy. Or may, as loving, unmarried partners, have planned one.
Which is why an offensive term like "bastard" is so obscene when applied to a child. The simplicity with which that child views the world can easily be lost sight of. Legally, technically and linguistically, "bastard" may be the correct term for a baby born to two unmarried people. But it implies a difference, a morally degenerate difference. And to a child who sees only right and wrong, only good and bad, the ifs and the whys are irrelevant. The only thing a beautiful, optimistic, full of potential child knows is that to be a "bastard" is to be shameful. The six-year-old optimist can too easily be confused and hurt, if society tells them they are a bastard.
My sense of embarrassment was, of course, nothing to that poisonous shame inflicted on the thousands of women forced into Magdalen laundries throughout the last century. It was nothing compared to the agony inflicted on 15-year-old Anne Lovett, whose shame of being unmarried and pregnant forced her into a Co Longford graveyard to give birth and die, alone, just over 20 years ago.
Nor was it anything comparable to the torture Joanne Hayes endured giving birth to her baby in Kerry in the early 1980s. Nor again does it come close to the torment of the children of some of those Magdalen women, have since gone through trying to find their mothers years after they had been given up.
The word "bastard", however, resonated for the same reasons with them as it did, in a small way, with me.
Language is never neutral. Language is a reflection of the way we interpret our society and by extension how we treat its members. Kevin Myers is an intelligent man who well knows this. To use the word "bastard" in reference to children is to legitimise the connotations around it. To make the use of the word bastard permissible about children is to make once again permissible the victimisation, discrimination, shame and hurt inflicted on thousands of children and their parents. It is to inflict confusion and shame on children. It is an incitement to - at best - think less of children "disadvantaged" by circumstances over which they had no control.
The label "bastard" is not just a word. And the hurt it has given rise to is too close to argue otherwise.
Kitty Holland is an Irish Times journalist, and the daughter of two journalists, the late Mary Holland, and Eamon McCann.