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Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children
Pye Henry Chavasse
134. _Have you any general remarks to make on the present fashion of dressing children_?
The present fashion is absurd. Children are frequently dressed like mountebanks, with feathers and furbelows
and finery; the boys go bare-legged; the little girls are dressed like women, with their stuck-out petticoats,
crinolines, and low dresses! Their poor little waists are drawn in tight, so that they can scarcely breathe; their
dresses are very low and short, the consequence is, that a great part of the chest is exposed to our variable
climate; their legs are bare down to their thin socks, or if they be clothed, they are only covered with gossamer
drawers; while their feet are encased in tight shoes of paper thickness! Dress! dress! dress! is made with them,
at a tender age, and when first impressions are the strongest, a most important consideration. They are thus
rendered vain and frivolous, and are taught to consider dress "as the one thing needful" And if they live to be
women--which the present fashion is likely frequently to prevent--what are they? Silly, simpering, delicate,
lack-a-daisical nonentities; dress being their amusement, their occupation, their conversation, their everything,
their thoughts by day and their dreams by night! Truly they are melancholy objects to behold! Let children be
dressed as children, not as men and women. Let them be taught that dress is quite a secondary consideration.
Let health, and not fashion, be the first, and we shall then have, with God's blessing, blooming children, who
will, in time, be the pride and strength of dear old England!
Pye Henry Chavasse
134. _Have you any general remarks to make on the present fashion of dressing children_?
The present fashion is absurd. Children are frequently dressed like mountebanks, with feathers and furbelows
and finery; the boys go bare-legged; the little girls are dressed like women, with their stuck-out petticoats,
crinolines, and low dresses! Their poor little waists are drawn in tight, so that they can scarcely breathe; their
dresses are very low and short, the consequence is, that a great part of the chest is exposed to our variable
climate; their legs are bare down to their thin socks, or if they be clothed, they are only covered with gossamer
drawers; while their feet are encased in tight shoes of paper thickness! Dress! dress! dress! is made with them,
at a tender age, and when first impressions are the strongest, a most important consideration. They are thus
rendered vain and frivolous, and are taught to consider dress "as the one thing needful" And if they live to be
women--which the present fashion is likely frequently to prevent--what are they? Silly, simpering, delicate,
lack-a-daisical nonentities; dress being their amusement, their occupation, their conversation, their everything,
their thoughts by day and their dreams by night! Truly they are melancholy objects to behold! Let children be
dressed as children, not as men and women. Let them be taught that dress is quite a secondary consideration.
Let health, and not fashion, be the first, and we shall then have, with God's blessing, blooming children, who
will, in time, be the pride and strength of dear old England!