The story of gendered clothing for our youngest children is still unfolding, and will probably never be finished. Each generation learns a new set of rules, devised by the grown children of the previous generation. Each wave of parents dresses their sons and daughters in ways that represent their own memories and their present lives as men and women. Babies grow up, not in the parents’ cultures, but in their own, changing it by their very presence. Someday babies may be raised more as “persons” and less as “boys” and “girls” but that has not been our trajectory for more than one hundred years. In the meantime, if anyone wants to observe the most obvious, seemingly immutable gendered aspects of our culture, visit a class of four-year-olds. Existing in the time between awareness of their sex and security in its expression, they enact every rule they observe with uncanny precision. By the time they reach their teens, they will be twisting and stretching the rules that vex them the most. Then they will become adults (and parents) and the dance goes on.
This is the first draft (and therefore ROUGH!!) if the last paragraph of my concluding chapter. Comments and suggestions most welcome.
The story of gendered clothing for our youngest children is still unfolding, and will probably never be finished. Each generation learns a new set of rules, devised by the grown children of the previous generation. Each wave of parents dresses their sons and daughters in ways that represent their own memories and their present lives as men and women. Babies grow up, not in the parents’ cultures, but in their own, changing it by their very presence. Someday babies may be raised more as “persons” and less as “boys” and “girls” but that has not been our trajectory for more than one hundred years. In the meantime, if anyone wants to observe the most obvious, seemingly immutable gendered aspects of our culture, visit a class of four-year-olds. Existing in the time between awareness of their sex and security in its expression, they enact every rule they observe with uncanny precision. By the time they reach their teens, they will be twisting and stretching the rules that vex them the most. Then they will become adults (and parents) and the dance goes on. Comments are closed.
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Jo PaolettiProfessor Emerita Archives
January 2023
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