Figure 1.--While long stockings were commonly worn in cold weaher. We see many German children wearing stockings even in warm weather. Mothers were especially concerned with keeping younger children warm. This snap shot is undated. We would guess it ws tken in the 1940s.

Keeping children warm was surely the principal reason for dressing boys and girls in long stockings. We do not, however, just see German children wearing long stockings in the winter. While not so common, some German boys even wore long stockings in the summer. Here there was a range of reasons. Boys and girls in the 19th century might wear long stockings all year round. There were a range of reasons for this, including fashion, formality, and modesty. This became less common, although formality continued to be a factor in the 20th century. Another factor was change of season. Children might continued to wear long stockings until a calendar month, but the weather might turn warm early before mother made the change. Here there were differences from family to family. Another factor is age. Mothers arecespecially concered with keeping yonger children warm. Thus younger children were more commonly dressed un long stockngs even after the weather tuned war. Here a factor was that children were dressed in the morning when it might be cool. If it turned war, a sweater or even a shirt might be tken oiff, but stockings we a little more complicated.