Breeching (boys)

[2] Various forms of relatively subtle differences usually enabled others to tell depictions of little boys from those of little girls, in codes that modern art historians are able to understand but may be difficult for the layperson to discern.

[citation needed] The change was probably made once boys had reached the age when they could easily undo the rather complicated fastenings of many early modern breeches and trousers.

Before roughly 1550 various styles of long robes were in any case commonly worn by adult males of various sorts, so boys wearing them could probably not be said to form a distinct phenomenon.

The many portraits of Balthasar Charles, Prince of Asturias (1629–1646), son of Philip IV of Spain, show him wearing breeches from about the age of six.

A letter of 1679 from Lady Anne North to her widowed and absent son gives a lengthy account of the breeching of her grandson: "Never had any bride that was to be dressed upon her wedding-night more hands about her, some the legs and some the armes, the taylor buttn'ing and other putting on the sword, and so many lookers on that had I not a ffinger amongst them I could not have seen him.

[5] The first progression, for both boys and girls, was when they were shortcoated or taken out of the long dresses worn by babies that came well below the feet, which have survived as the modern christening robe.

Toddlers' gowns often featured leading strings, which were narrow straps of fabric or ribbon attached at the shoulder and held by an adult while the child was learning to walk.

[6][7] After this stage, in the Early Modern period it is usually not too difficult to distinguish between small boys and girls in commissioned portraits of the wealthy, even where the precise identities are no longer known.

The smaller figures of small children in genre painting have less detail, and painters often did not trouble to include distinguishing props as they did in portraits.

In the 19th century, perhaps as childhood became sentimentalised, it becomes harder to tell the clothing apart between the sexes; the hair remains the best guide, but some mothers were evidently unable to resist keeping this long too.

A speech by King Leontes from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale implies that, as common sense would suggest, these could not be drawn, and were purely for show: Looking on the lines Of my boy's face, methought I did recoil Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech'd In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled, Lest it should bite its master, and so prove (As ornament oft does) too dangerous.

[9] — he also calls his dress a "coat"; "cote" was a French and English term, dating back to the Middle Ages, for earlier adult male gowns and seems to have been kept in use for boys' clothes to preserve some gender distinction.