This dope thread about gender neutral child raising made me wonder. Other than dress did parents 100, 200 or 300 years ago have less or more rigid expectations about children should behave in modelling gendered behavior when toddlers or prior to puberty?
I get that when kids were of a marriageable age it was time to do your duty and make babies but prior to that for a kid in the early 1900’s, the 1800’s or the 1700’s were they covered up with “boys do this and girls do that” as young children?
The basic answer is yes.
The longer answer is that the western idea of a ‘childhood’ between toddler and 13 or 15 or so is a very modern concept. Largely, once a toddler was out of long dresses (gender neutral) then they dressed and were expected to behave like a smaller version of what their gender role was for that place and time, including speech patterns, chores, ‘appropriate’ types of work, and interests and leisure activities.
You need to make a distinction between classes as well. Most of what we know of the past, is about the upper class, because no one else could write and record what was going on.
You can bet that no one in the lower classes cared who wore white after Labor Day.
By our standards adults a hundred years ago were incredibly gendered. Think of the stereotype of the man who can’t boil an egg because “that’s women’s work”, and if you go back far enough - not really all that far, considering - many occupations like doctor, lawyer etc were barred to women.
So insofar as children were considered ‘adults in training’ (that is, from the age of about 3 or 4) they would have been under considerable gender-conforming pressure. But not so much from marketing. More from social-family pressure, because everyone knew that “this is the way it is”. More unisex clothing for toddlers. A lot fewer little boys helping their dad make a cake.
I heard this a couple of times growing up, but was never told why this was. Growing up in Chicago, I figured it had to do with disappearing against a background of snow.
That can’t be it. Or can it? What is the reason for this rule?
Not to hijack. I just wonder if anyone knows.
Things were way more gender specific for children in the old days, by the way. Girls couldn’t be crossing guards in my school. Those were “patrol boys”. It changed around seventh grade, and was seen as a big deal that girls could be “patrol persons”.
At the same time, it’s also true that many notions about what is “manly” or “womanly” have changed, and that same as they vary by location nowadays they varied by location in the past. Sometimes within the same country: being from a place where everybody is traditionally expected to learn to cook, I’m always stunned when I encounter men my age who can’t even prepare breakfast unless a breakfast bar is provided for them. The fact that their wives are teaching their sons to cook baffles them exactly as much (we’re not necessarily talking gourmet, it’s age adequate and can therefore be as simple as “deciding what to buy today so you can have breakfast tomorrow” - which Daddy can’t do).
I’ve read some good books written by people who lived among the working class in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I recommend The Pearson Girls: A Memoir of the Dakota Plains, Buggies, Blizzards, and Babies, and Letters to Ida.
Among farmers and settlers on the American frontier, there certainly was a general division of labor, with most ‘outdoor’ work generally for men and ‘indoor’ work for women. As Lasciel said, this trickled down to children, with boys participating in men’s work as soon as they were able, and girls doing women’s work. However, the practical realities of farming life sometimes required flexibility. If there was extra work to be done outside, such as at planting or harvest time or in any emergency, then certainly the women and girls were out there alongside the men. In Kentucky the calendar centered around the tobacco harvest of cutting, hanging, and then shucking the tobacco was done by men and women, young and old, side by side. Also if the man of the house was sick or travelling or unable to work for any reason, the women would need to step up and fill in. In those times, if work wasn’t completed, starvation might result, so practical necessity lead to everyone working whatever tasks were needed when they were needed.
The Buggies, Blizzards, and Babies book that I linked to above is by Cora Freer Hawkins, born tot a rural Iowa doctor around 1870. Growing up, she worked alongside her father in the doctor’s office and traveled with him on house calls. Later she studied in med school and became a doctor herself. So women did have options other than housewife.
The most powerful of all unnatural forces: fashion.
I am quite familiar with my family history for several generations back, due to narratives, letters, family documents, photos, etc. My great-great-grandparents were born in the 1820s; my parents were born in the 1920s. Generally, my ancestors were Midwestern farmers.
Up until my generation, gender expectations were very rigid pretty much from birth.
As soon as physically possible, male children started helping with their father’s chores, and females started helping their mother. Older female children cared for the younger children. And there were lots of children, typically 10 to 12.
A poster upthread mentioned women stepping in to help with things like the harvest when needed. Men, however, rarely lowered themselves to do women’s work. If the wife was sick (or dead), men hired a girl, or got help from female neighbors or relatives until the man could find a new wife.
Farm life pretty much sucked for everyone.
I don’t know much about this site but here’s something on “the no white after labor day” rule:
I find it hard to believe that the average family size 100 years ago was 10-12 children. It might have been a lot more common than today, but not average.
If we are talking about gendered division of labour, then
i) That always seems to have existed
ii) What exactly was women’s work varied in time and place’
iii) There were quite a few things which were done by both genders.
Complicating this is the fact that the division between work and home is something that only emerged in the 19th century withe the development of mass transit. Earlier people live at or near to where they worked.
Progressives actually rallied against women working in factories and the mines.
[QUOTE=Aspidistra]
not really all that far, considering - many occupations like doctor, lawyer etc were barred to women
[/QUOTE]
Hmmm, not really. More accurate would be that their were lots of encumbrances to most classes of people entering the professions; religion, birthplace, caste, family money etc were all removed by the late 19th century leaving only gender, which may or may not have applied.
I don’t have to go that far back, I can go back 60 years to when I was a kid.
Indoor stuff was women’s stuff. Cooking, cleaning, watching the other kids - all girls’ jobs.
Mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage, shoveling the snow, all boys.
At school, anything with running or physical exertion was for boys. We had a powder puff football game for a couple of years in high school until it was decided it was too unfeminine and stopped. Boys wore shorts and a t-shirts to PE with their names written on the back in marker. Girls were required to wear these horrible green cotton one-piece PE uniforms which were to be taken home on Friday, laundered, ironed, and checked on Monday for cleanliness and neatness. Our names were to be cross-stitched on the back in white embroidery thread, or, if that couldn’t be done, ironed on neatly with iron on letters.
We lived in Chicago, and it didn’t matter how cold it was. Girls wore skirts or dresses to school. No pants unless you wanted to wear them under your dress and take them off the minute you got in the building. Boys pretty much wore what they wanted.
The boys delivered the milk to the classrooms for lunch. That was considered an unsuitable job for girls.
I could watch my younger brother and sister at 11 or 12, and did. My brother, a year older, couldn’t, because he was a boy, and wouldn’t know what to do.
Things like that were common, and such a part of life that they were almost never remarked on except by me when I was in my grumbling, complaining mood.
Most of your post is really interesting, but I suspect this line isn’t accurate: a boy who showed up at school in a dress would probably have found himself in trouble.
I’m reading my third graders a book in which a 19th-century girl is scandalized by the thought of wearing trousers instead of a dress. My students are all shocked at this and like “THAT’S NOT FAIR! THAT’S SO STUPID!” I shut the book and asked them to imagine a boy showing up to school in a dress, and they all burst out laughing. “You’re not so different from them,” I said, and they suddenly got very thoughtful.
Heck, even when I was growing up in the late 70s/early 80s expectations were more rigid. Most girls wore dresses every day. Pants and shorts were only for playtime or gym days at school. Girls got dolls and toy kitchens and whatnot, while boys got trucks and guns and there was an unspoken rule about one group touching the other group’s stuff. I wasn’t allowed to watch “boy stuff” on TV (anything with a lot of action or violence, although Looney Toons and Tom & Jerry were a-ok for some reason).
It extended to school, too. Girls had to be quiet and ladylike but the boys were allowed go as nertz as they liked. Stuff like, when we were studying dinosaurs the teacher came in with a bunch of little plastic dinos and the boys got to pick out the meat eaters but girls only got to pick plant eaters. Or when we were studying Native Americans, the boys’ project was a to make a replica weapon, and the girls made… bead necklaces.
You’re probably right, but in my family (both sides), it was. As I mentioned, these were very poor Midwestern farm families. There was no birth control, other than abstinence, which it appears they didn’t favor.
My great-grandmother (born 1865) pushed out children like clockwork every two years, except for the five years that she and Grandpa lived in a small cabin with his mother.
It was not uncommon for children to die in infancy.
Children born and children that got to double-figures ages are two very different things.
“Removed by the late 19th century” where they were. My great-grandfather was able to go to college because he got a full fellowship, but most people born in his social class didn’t even get to what Americans would call middle school. Most people in my parents’ generation finished any schooling they got by age 10, and that’s with compulsory education already theoretically in place… up to age 10.
Huh. I’m about your age, and I remember the opposite. Sure, I had little plaid or corduroy dresses I wore to school sometimes, but they weren’t frilly. I had a boyish shag when I was about 5-7, and many girls beside me wore pretty unisex clothing–overalls, plaid “cowboy shirts,” turtlenecks, plain slacks, saddle shoes or penny loafers. Now, if I want that kind of clothing for my 5 y.o. daughter, I generally have to go to the boys section (or higher-end retailers than I feel warranted). Otherwise even basics are all pink and purple and sparkly or ruffled or worse. And she feels like I’m dressing her in “yucky boys’ clothes” if I give her a plain red tee and jeans to put on.
I made mud pies, caught toads and crawfish and smashed rocks with the boy next door, and I regularly got things like Matchbox cars, Tonka and Lego for my gifts without feeling one way or the other about it–toys were toys. This was in rural Texas, early 80s, so maybe that made a difference. There were always a few girls who were what I’d call “high-maintenance”, but they stood out vaguely as sort of a prissy anomaly.
Anyway, I think there’s a bigger superficial difference right now as far as gender identification for the under-8s, at least.
This represents my memories of childhood:
There's a great book about the periodic rise and fall of gender-specific kids' clothing some of you might be interested in:http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?isbn=978-0-253-00130-6