Good Gawd! These thumbsuckers would have never made it in my mother's house or mine.
My mother raised me by herself, worked her ass off, never hesitated to correct me (ie whoop my ass) when I was wrong, and never failed to tell me the unvarnished truth no matter how hard it may have been. Not insulting or sarcastic, just the truth. God bless her for the steel in her spine.
In my house, you get the same damn thing.
My young daughter in law came to me the other night, very upset at an email she received from my son; he is stationed in Germany and she is staying with us until it's time for her to join him. She asked him a very pointed question and received a very blunt answer. When she asked me how should she respond, I laughed and told her she should thank him for his honesty and reply in kind: Honest, direct, to the point, not demeaning.
I told her that she could blame me completely for his way of handling that.