Though, I can't embed it, I watched a PBS Origin of Everything video today about Baby Gender Roles: Why boys wear blue and girls wear pink. It was a fascinating watch, even if I do agree with one commenter that the videos are a little redundant. I watched one about Halloween Candy last year and found it repetitive and too long. So, their videos, I think could be more concise, but it's good information. The video basically discusses that there were no gender roles for small children until after The Great War (WWI), with a boom in the late '40's and '50's; then again in the mid-80s to present.
The video only discusses the wearing of dresses for boys from about the mid 1800s until after The Great War, though it stretches much farther back into history than that. It dates back to the mid-1500s. All babies wore dresses, or gowns as they were called. And depending upon which country you were from, your son was then breeched between ages two to eight. As in he was allowed to wear breeches, which you'd know them as short pants. You know the type of men's pant worn in the Elizabethan Era or even during The American Revolution. Pants that came to just below the knee cap and buttoned on the side there to help keep the stockings up, because they weren't called socks back then. All men wore breeches from boyhood until death, until the latter part of the 1700s and early part of the 1800s when only boys were wearing breeches and once they hit a certain age, would then wear long pants. Even my grandfather looked like Franklin D. Roosevelt's photo up there, only less fancy as they weren't nearly as wealthy as the Roosevelt's. However, my grandfather was born in 1898. And though I've been told by everyone not related to me that I must be mistaken and that he was probably my great or even great-great grandfather, he was not. He and my grandmother couldn't have children and decided to adopt. He was fifty when they adopted my mother in 1948. I've even been told that my grandmother wasn't my grandmother because she was born in 1909, but she was; being just 39 when my mother was adopted. Anyways, that's the short of my family history. My mom and aunt were adopted to two rather old people instead of to a couple in their early twenties. Though I didn't know my grandfather because he died two years before I was born, his knowledge of life handed down to my mom, along with knowing my grandmother made my sister and I very well educated people for our ages. Besides the fact that I dearly loved my grandmother, it was great to know these things and they didn't seem so far into the distant past as learning them from a book or hearing a tale of "My great great great great grandpappy..." instead I heard, "My father..." We recently sent a lot of his belongings back to his home town for a museum there, so I no longer have his baby or childhood photo, but I did see them my entire life growing up and knew from an early age that boys used to wear dresses and it wasn't a big deal at all. I also knew that white was what everyone wore because it was easier to clean and colour wouldn't fade. I also think that the type and colour of the garment stems from the fact that children and babies were not as important in a manner of speaking. They were and they weren't. I'm not saying families didn't mourn if a child died or something, but children were meant to be seen and not heard, which was an adage used at least since the 1700s. People didn't have the same view about them as they do now. Also, children died. People died, but infant and child mortality rates were pretty bad. I've not come across families in my genealogical research that didn't lose at least one child, sometimes three. Or reading about historical figures or families; people just lost children a lot. So, I think there was a mentality of 'it's not important until it reaches this age, because after this age the chances of it staying alive are really great'. So, why not have everyone in something easy to clean/no colour, and the same type of garment. I can see how it's easier to change soiled nappy's and babies are messy from their mouths too, but I think my theory might have at least some basis in the decision. I could be wrong, but there's my thought on it. What I didn't know is that department stores wanted to make money basically and instead of having to use some hand-me-down article of clothing, you could buy new clothes because look! colour assignment. Makes sense from a marketing scheme, but I never thought about it, nor did I know it. Though clothiers tried promoting the baby clothes in pastels in the mid-1800s, it only caught on with affluent people at the turn of the 20th century, but then the Great War happened and no one cared anymore if their baby was fashionably pastel or not. They didn't even care if they were fashionably pastel or not. And it was interesting that department stores couldn't agree on which colour for which gender with some stating blue for boys and pink for girls, while others stated the opposite; pink for boys and blue for girls. After the war it started back up again, with no one knowing which colour for which gender, but it still hadn't gained a lot of ground until after WWII. Though colour was still not set, people really bought into that whole baby gender kit. That's when it really caught on, for a time, according to the video. The late sixties and seventies saw non-gendered clothing colours of babies with greens and yellows, (which the advert they show, oh man I loved those colours!) and it seemed OK and might have stayed that way, except for the advent of sonography, or the Ultrasound, in the mid-1980s. People could now know, before the birth, what gender their baby was and marketing people leapt on to that. And basically here we are. For me, I think the fifties ruined a lot of things. Older generations alive right now, the people who were born or were in their childhoods in the fifties seem to have a really difficult time letting their childhood ideals go. Things seen/heard/tasted/experienced/whatever in their childhoods. A lot of what they know was relatively brand new during this time period. I understand that as a child, they don't realize this and think 'this is it, it's always been this way, and well... this is great!' I have found that just within my own family, that my parents will talk about how wonderful their childhood was, while their parents will say to me how such and such was new, or it was a weird change, or this was a fad. They weren't looking on their childhoods as awesome, nor were they looking back on the fifties as awesome. And they could tell me that they were fully away of this change or that change that happened. One example being "In God We Trust" being added to money. However, my parents will want to argue all day long that "In God We Trust" has ALWAYS been on money and God shouldn't be taken out of stuff, even though their parents knew that God was put into a lot of stuff only in the fifties. Did my parents not talk to their parents? Did they cover their ears if this was mentioned? Stick their heads in the sand? They're not the only people either that I've witnessed this from. Sure I enjoyed my childhood and I also realize that my perspective, as a small child, was completely different to older kids or even adults; which is why I paid attention in history class and researched life events on my own, so that I could have a better picture of society at the time of my childhood and even before. So, the same people will not want to hear anything different about Blue for Boys or Pink for Girls or that boys wore dresses. Why? Because they didn't personally wear dresses and were slapped into blue clothes, so apparently it never happened any other way. Even though my dad is fully aware of my grandfathers picture and the first hand account from his own mouth that "sure, that's how it was" are no match for his fifties gendered roles sensibilities. It's sissy for a boy to wear a dress and pink is for girls and guys have to be all manly and anything else that pertains to the fifties, but doesn't directly pertain to small children and babies in dresses or pink/blue. It baffles the mind as to how much discord, distortion, and misinformation happened in the fifties, for those children of the fifties. I'm not entirely sure how it happened exactly and not so much for other generations before or since, but it did happen... and well it's just baffling and exasperating to say the least. But, yes, good information in the video/or my hopefully shortened transcription of it.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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