United States Boys' Clothes: Mother's Wishes (1900s)
Figure 1.--Mothers in the 19th and early-20 centuries liked candy-box images of perfect children. Often they weree put into scrap books. In the case of this 1900 commercial, copyrighted image, it was a large cabinet card and hung on the wall. The wo children exploring music. The little boy plays the piano while his animated sister sings away. In this case the clothes are that imagniative. It was still common the dress boys like this. This came out of a fine estate of an elderly couple who were downsizing and belonged to the lady's mother. It measures about 16" in height by 12" across.
One interesting topic is how mother's depicted the perdect children, both how they dressed and behaved. This of course is difficulkt to assess. We see it with yhe youjngdr children befoire they begin to express serious preferences. Anothe very usedful indicator is scrap booking. It was very common at the time to keep scrapbooks. This was mostly done by mothers and girls. At the time this was not just family photographs, which became much more prevalent in the 1990s because of the advent of the family snapshot. The Kodak Brownie appeared in 1900. But mothers added in all kinds of other items, including post cards and store bought commercial images. Some of these images were candy-box type idealized images of perfect children. This shows what mothers wanted at home. Actually what mothers wanted in term of clothing at any rate is generally what they got. For the girls it did not make much difference. Fir the boys it made a considerable difference. This began to change notably around the turn-of=the 20th century. It is unclear just why. a range of factors may have been incolved, including public schools, mass media, and other factors. It was just began at this time, but after World War I in the 1920s it became incresingly noteabe.
