Stories about broken taboos are not always easy to tell. There is a taboo against stories that show a third party in an excessively poor light, and some taboos may be so strong that the speaker is reluctant to describe his/her own breaches.

A relatively mild taboo is the one about not neglecting guests. A clash of expectations may occur when a family member from an older generation, who themselves used to have guests in the era when few wives went out to work, stays in a household where all adults work. It took JD s parents a long time to realize that it wasn t in fact very convenient for their adult children to have them to stay during the working week. Oh, do you have to go to work? said to a sister who is a schoolteacher. The degree of inconvenience may vary with the competence of the parent to get their own breakfast, clear up after them, leave and lock the house, complete their pleasure trips or shopping, return and reenter the house, without endangering themselves or the security of the house.

The taboo about not asking guests to leave was broken on both sides when JD had a problematic guest. Many people can recount stories of having offered a bed on a temporary basis and then finding themselves with a guest who was more difficult to manage and staying for longer than anticipated. This guest was a former colleague who had then worked abroad for...