Do you let your little boy wear dresses?

my favourite picture of da from nursery is him walking around in his tracksuit and cardi I dressed him in, with a pair of dressing up high heels, a construction hat - carrying a ah bag and a screwdriver and fixing a toy car.

just about sums up being 3!!!!!

I suspect your DH is worried his son may become gay or less masculine if he wears a princess outfit which is such a ridiculous and old fashioned view.

Your DS is 3, he likes it because at 3 it gives him joy to use his imagination, play, sing, be like the princess in Frozen and join in with his friends.

You and your DH could say no you can’t wear it or play dress up but at 3 he is too little to understand the reason why and it will just make him feel shitty and that there is something wrong with him.

It is a DH problem for him to work on.

My little lad chose bright pink glasses, and loves wearing princess dresses/mermaid skirts out and about. He's only 5yr but it's interesting and lovely how his classmates don't bat an eyelid or see it as anything unusual or different. I'm sure that will change perhaps as he gets older, if he continues enjoying those items of clothing. It's great your son is so confident in what he likes that he chooses not to let silly comments stop him.

I wouldn’t have a problem with it - letting them explore playtime doesn’t mean that they’re going to grow up trans or even confused! If my daughter wants to dress up as Batman, I’m not going to wag my finger at her and tell her that she needs to be Catwoman for pete’s sake. It’s that simple.

Yes, as much as he wants to.

He's five years old and loves princess dresses and mermaid skirts. He has a couple of princess dresses and one mermaid skirt and ops to wear them fairy often, maybe once every couple of weeks. He enjoys wearing them to classmates' parties, or just out and about.

It brings him so much joy to wear them and twirl around and be like his friends (most of whom are girls). I can't say anyone has batted an eyelid amongst friends or strangers. At the park or supermarket strangers say they love his dress, if they say anything at all. Family either compliment it or say nothing.

He is old enough to understand that some people think only girls should wear dresses and only boys should wear dungarees and that that's a bit silly because people can wear whatever they like. He did once hear a kid at the park say why is that boy in the a dress, and ignored them. I asked later what he felt when they said that and he said he didn't feel anything cos he was too busy having fun playing.

If/when he wants to wear them more often that's fine, if he stops asking to wear them that's fine. What matters is that he knows we love him, we love everything about him, and we support his freedom to choose what he likes to wear (as long as it's safe/context-appropriate etc.).

This brings back memories of having to carry my 3-year-old cousin out of ASDA screaming because he wanted an Elsa wig. He eventually got the wig AND dress and lived in it for 6 months.
Various family members accused us of training him to be 'gay'. Which got ignored and shut down
He's now a stereotypical monosyllabic 14-year-old who lives in North Face and Monitrex (but still secretly loves a musical)

Lots of things are different now to previous generations but if suicide is the ultimate expression of unhappiness, far fewer people commit suicide now than in 1980, for example. I appreciate we hear about 'gender issues' a lot more now but we also still live in an incredibly gendered world so I don't think you can say that lack of gender stereotypes is causing the issue. Walk into any toy shop and it's very clear which toys are for girls and which are for boys - more children might be questioning that now but the answer is to say any toy is for any child, not to try and stop them questioning.

My 7 year old love what he calls pretty clothes, sequins right now but it was dresses at one point.

Would you let your daughter dress up as a pirate? Ofcourse you would. My brother was a beautiful princess and so was my sons. They had plenty of dress up clothes so one day princess, one day a ninja etc. Why limit their imagination. I can reassure you (eg your dh) none of three have become trans or gay🙄..

Ah, this is so cute.

My DS grew up with a slightly older sister who he idolised (still does). He loved everything she was into. If she had a pink tutu, he wanted one too. If she had toy make-up, he wanted some too. I’ve got lots of pictures from when he was little, dressed up like some sort of 3 year old bad drag act. It’s cute and they grow out of it. But yes, my DH wasn’t best pleased at the time but I told him to keep his opinions to himself which he largely did.

I don't think this is the case - when I was growing up in the 80s we were all just dressed in brown velour joggers. There were some girls' things and boys' things (I had the amazing magic key shoes) but it was not quite so polarised. Things seem to have got much worse now and it's walls of sparkly pink for girls and brown and navy sludge for boys.

Anyway, DS is now 4 and although he still likes stuff from the girls' sections, you can see him starting to recognise and negotiate social norms by himself, without bullying. He's normally a different baby animal every day, but now he'll say 'Mum, don't tell anyone I'm a baby starling when we get to nursery' - he chooses when to role play and when not to. I think that's a pretty normal part of growing up, and probably most of the toddlers-in-princess-dresses work out for themselves somewhere between 3 and 5 when we do role play and when we don't.

It’s super normal to be curious. Girls dressing up often involves shiny fabric with fake jewels - perfect for imaginary play about magic.
Unfortunately you need to be more mindful once he’s school aged and the other kids say stuff like boys don’t wear dresses but at age 3, super common to have tried makeup and wearing a dress.
Men who don’t like it are usually worried about their boys becoming gay or trans as a result but ime there is no correlation.
My daughter has dressed as Spiderman and other males too. 🤷‍♀️

Exactly.

Trying to force people into rigid gender stereotypes is an issue and can cause confusion.

I do think things would be better if boys were just told that of course boys can wear dresses, it still means you're a boy, just like girls wearing trousers or having short hair still means that they are girls.

Nothing confusing about that.

100 percent I would let my sons wear a dress. Especially princess ones as it’s from films and fun. My sons never have been interested but my daughters have Batman, Spider-Man, a gruffolo costume, woody and buzz costumes, Harry Potter, and bananas in Pajamas costumes (and multiple princess dresses) which would all probably be classed as boys costumes and no one ever bats an eyelid so it’s sad that when a boy wears a princess dress there’s a big open mouthed ‘oh my god’ response, usually from men

@FanofLeaves My son loves all the Disney Princesses, I have just booked Disney on Ice for his birthday. We bought an Elsa skirt and crown set last week. If you think about it the male characters in Disney are all a bit rubbish, the women have powers and are strong and independent. Why would he want to be Kristoff when he could be Elsa. My son often pretends to be Elsa and Isabella from Encanto. The outfits are better, my sons favourite colour is pink and he loves rainbows, he told me the other day his heart was full of rainbows. They are like this for such a short amount of time. As long as his cousins weren't teasing him it's not like he's going to school dressed as a girl where kids might be cruel. It took my husband a minute to get on board but now he buys our son a Disney Princess magazine if that's what he choses. I hope your DH comes round.

It’s a normal phase. DS at about three started with dress up dresses, then progressed to telling me he was going to be a Mummy when he grew up and wanting lots of clothes from the “girl’s” section. We did draw the line at ordinary dresses (as opposed to dresses that were dressing up outfits) but he had pink joggers and lilac trainers and rainbow ombré pyjamas. I did correct him thinking he was going to be a Mummy or could become a girl - he was just a boy who liked pink and Disney princess dresses. He also had a couple of dolls that he enjoyed pushing in prams and briefly enjoyed Polly Pockets.

A couple of months later he was totally over the whole thing and in the decade since has steadfastly refused to wear anything but black, navy and football kits.

Let your son enjoy his Elsa phase. I’d only stop him if it was the sort of family event where I’d also stop him wearing a Batman outfit or a football strip - like a wedding.

I wouldn’t worry about it personally.

My nearly 8yo DS went through this phase when he was three. He found a ‘princess dress’ at nursery and he loved wearing it. He wanted one at home so I got him one. He went to nursery in it one week and set a little trend amongst the other little boys - apparently, they all raided the dressing up box and ran around playing football in their dresses 😂

Phase lasted about a week in our case and he is very much in to boy things now. Don’t think he’d be caught dead in a dress!

My DS used to love the princess fancy dress at nursery or a friends house. I see it as no different than my DD dressing up as spiderman or batman really. He outgrew it by school.

If he wanted to wear typical stereotypical girls clothing on a daily basis it would have been a conversation to have with my DH what we wanted to do though

Well its only recently that parents have stopped saying thats for boys or thats for girls and we have the most confused and unhappy generation we have ever had. Mental health issues are rising in young people, gender identity issues are rising in young people. This wasnt such an issue in any other generation.

But surely you can see that saying X is for girls and Y is for boys promotes gender identity issues? If I am a boy and I like wearing a dress that's not an issue unless I think that only girls wear dresses... now I am thinking i need to start chopping bits of my body off because I like dresses. If I am a girl and I want short hair and to play rugby that's all good, but if I think only boys like doing those things then now I need to question my gender identity.

Re wearing the dress to Morrisons, I’d answer the same as I did with my Dd, “It’s not practical to go shopping in a long dress, so let’s chose some different clothes and when you get home you can get changed again if you like”.

You can also add “mummy doesn’t wear a long dress to go to Morrisons, imagine if I did, I’d probably trip up and end up in a heap amongst the carrots” etc etc. Then get him changed.

if DS asks ‘why’ when I say no to him wearing the dress around Morrisons or on the train into London it’s not an easy question to answer for a three year old who is still so innocent of the world.

This is absolutely the issue OP because if you say 'dresses are for girls' and he wants to wear one you might end up down a rabbit hole of "well then maybe I am a girl then?" I know that sounds extreme (and almost certainly isn't going to happen as a one off event when he is 3) but ironically, by trying to reinforce gender stereotypes your DH leaves open the possibility that your child might start questioning their gender if they don't feel they conform 100% to the stereotype.

I feel sorry for all the kids we seem to have now in this country who grow up with gender identity issues because their parents never explained to them the difference between boys and girls and in some cases encouraged it to prove to other parent how open minded they are