The mobile cold-beer vendor engages us all in conversation and poses for a picture with my daughter. The women's toilets on the concourse are busy, but there are two attendants directing the queues, so my wife is in and out in a minute or two.

Entertainment is visible everywhere. Those not fully engaged in the game are making use of the excellent leisure facilities. Later, the crowd breaks into Take me out the Ball Game while the temperature gauge hits 30 degrees.

Having been 5-0 down in the second and 5-6 down in the sixth, the Chicago Cubs rally to a 9-6 victory. Father rubs his eyes in amazement, as he experiences baseball for the first time. "I can't believe it," he declares. "No-one's swearing!"

It's a special kind of organisation that has the ability to look dispassionately at itself, and the Football League has recently engaged a group of families to report on their experiences at all 72 league clubs. Among other things, it has learned that if sides are serious about converting new family groups into regular attendees, they need to address swearing.

The intrepid band of families that visited every club reported swearing as forming a key lasting impression at 46 per cent of the games they attended. When they travelled as away fans it was, unsurprisingly perhaps, a lot worse, with two out of three games ruined for the kids by foul and abusive language.

The fact is that the beautiful game offers some curious paradoxes. With campaigns like Fans of the Future, launched in 2005/2006 to encourage kids to develop a passion for their local club, and the launch of last year's Family Excellence Awards, football seems to have a renewed focus on creating its own future customers – and yet the continued apparent tolerance of swearing flies in the face in such confident steps.

But the league is acting. A new campaign, Enjoy The Match, aims to instigate a zero-tolerance policy towards foul and abusive language, threatening behaviour and racial, homophobic or discriminatory abuse in family areas. That's not to say that clubs don't react to these situations, but a new code of conduct has been launched and clubs are being encouraged to take a much more pro-active approach to managing their family areas.

You'll know your own club has signed up when you hear the specially recorded PA announcement asking you to moderate your language in the family area: it stands out because a child delivers it. A viral video has also been prepared. It made me chuckle.

Does it follow that the next step will be to eradicate foul and abusive language in all parts of the ground? An interesting question and one which reveals the curious culture that has built up around our national game. All of the clubs I know – and I sometimes work in the industry – abhor the sort of behaviour that puts football behind lots of other family leisure destinations.

Yet, when a first-time family of four feel that they cannot return because foul language is tolerated, football's culture often seems to prefer to count on the weekly £25 from the sad individual who perpetrates this behaviour rather than to make more of an effort to quadruple their income.

At rugby league, it's routine to hear an announcement asking fans to moderate their language because "this is a family occasion" – and yet one often gets the impression that if this was repeated at football stadia, it would somehow demean the "regulars".

Some interesting theories have been postulated. Some claim that the passion created by living your team's every moment can spill over into a volley of expletives. I wonder whether this concept translates to other moments of passion.

The fact is football has tolerated a set of circumstances that makes it unique. Baseball has Field of Dreams, horse racing has its Bob Champion biopic and athletics has Chariots of Fire. Emotional, engaging family movies, all of them. So what do we have to celebrate the glories of our national game? Green Street I think you'll find. A film about violence, foul language and cruelty.

It's gratifying to see the tolerance levels shifting downwards, and it's within this context of progression and forward thinking that some
of our local sides are thriving. A factor in the upsurge in attendances at Bradford City and Huddersfield Town has been the focus on the family, both in pricing and match-day experience.

Elsewhere, other clubs are finding ways to embrace the next generation of supporters by recognising that they can only impress new families if they can get them to come along in the first place. And, if you can't commit to a season ticket, clubs like Bury can offer you specially priced tickets, regardless of how the family is made up (last season, for example, it was one adult and three juniors for £23).

Not only has Yeovil Town recruited a fleet of warmly welcoming volunteer stewards, but the West Country club also operates an Away Family Enclosure, so family groups feel encouraged to travel with their team.

And there's still a lot more to do. Pre-match and half-time entertainment is equally important in entertaining the kids during your team's annual poor patch (albeit tending to involve chipping a ball into a receptacle of some description). But, ultimately, it is those clubs who know that families base the decision to come back on more than just the football, who attract and retain fans most effectively.

I'm a football fan – a follower of Sunderland since attending my first match in 1969 (the result of which would make anyone swear) – and
I'm not going to suggest that we need to completely Americanise our national game.

But our recent experience in Chicago has convinced me that swearing in football in this country is a psychological block that we can overcome, as long as we can convince our clubs that attracting new fans is only part of the challenge.

Getting them to come back regularly is what matters – and when you see things from the family's point of view, you know instantly that these recent positive developments have been long overdue.

Mark Bradley is a writer and consultant working to raise the profile of customer service in the UK. His new book, Retails of the Unexpected, is available from www.ardrapress.co.uk