Figure 1.--This mother probably 1890 has all her children in dresses, ringlets, and hairbows. Is it possibly that all of her children were girls? Imagine the poor father who must have wanted at least one son.

This American mother is pictured with her six children, probably in the early 1890s. At first glance they all look like girls as they are wearing dresses and have ringlets and hair bows. None of the dresses have any boyish touches what so ever.

Could all the children be girls? Seven girls in one family seems rather unlikely. Of course it is possible that the children are all girls, but the odds on that are astronomically high. An HBC contributor calculates that the odds of having 6 girls is 1/125 or less than 1 percent. (Don't be confused by the doll, also in a white dress.) Of course it is possible that the mother wanted a photograph with just her daughters. The children are all fairly close in age. The oldest child looks only about 10 or 11. The mother would have had to have had an awfully large number of children on an extrodinarily frequent interval to have had boys as well. Severalmare so close in age that it would not have been possible to have had other children in between. More than likely this was the entire family.

The dresses are not identical, but they are fairly similar. All are white without any boyish styling touches. Mothers who wanted to dress their children alike, would not chooses boyishly styled dresses. That would have been inappropriate for the girls.

It is impossible to tell from the faces whether the children or boys or girls. Seeral could be either. The ringlets and hairbows suggest that they were girls, but a great deal of evidence shows that American boys in the late 19th century wore ringlet curls, and a few even wore wore hair bows although that was less common.

Last updated: April 6, 1999