How quickly fashion changes ....
At the turn of the 20th century, Dressmaker Magazine wrote: 'The preferred colour to dress young boys in is pink. Blue is reserved for girls as it is considered paler, and the more dainty of the two colours, and pink is thought to be stronger (akin to red).'
As late as 1927, Time magazine reported that Princess Astrid of Belgium had been caught out when she gave birth to a girl, because 'The cradle…had been optimistically outfitted in pink, the colour for boys.'
Source:The 'QI' website.
The full article is found here ... http://qi.com/infocloud/gender
Comments
When boys wore dresses.
I remember seeing a photo of my father as a child in a dress with blonde ringlets in the 1920s - my whole life he was bald. Customs are very fluid over time - Wiki.
Rhona McCloud
It's only about 150 years
ago that the term girl referred to a prepubescent child of either sex, there was no word for a young female, and both sexes wore dresses until puberty.
Angharad
which is why...
The term 'Petticoat punishment' at the time had absolutely no gender connotations despite the amount of erotica that seems to have sprung up about it.
It was perhaps merely a way of indicating inappropriately childish behaviour rather than any attempt at feminization.
As for colours it is worth noting that Santa Claus wore green up until the start of the 20th Century.
Persephone
Non sum qualis eram
Pragmatically, dresses until
Pragmatically, dresses until puberty (at least in non-rural areas) makes sense. It's easier to get to diapers, especially when you're dealing with folded cloth with pins.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
My father wore dresses when
My father wore dresses when he was a baby, likely until he was 3-4 yrs. old. Very common practice for that era in history. (At 5-6 I have a picture of him with pants on and a pair of .45's on his hips and he could use them also at that young an age.) He was born in 1898, and lived a very small town in VERY rural Washington State. He always claimed that he was 'The only white kid on the Colville Reservation". An era past.
LynnaB
A somewhat more eloquent
A somewhat more eloquent article can be found here.