To buy my DS a dress?

[Isthereanyusernamesleft]

I've one DS, he is my first & last (traumatic birth).

He's only 10 weeks so is still quite neutral I.E you can't necessarily tell he's a boy yet!

I think dresses are lovely & as I don't follow this gender society crap of girls wear dresses & pink & boys wear blue & trousers.....I don't see the issue in putting my DS in a dress.

However, everyone else thinks it's wrong!

Is it??

OP

you know you started the discussion, right ?

OP you are just trying to make a point but keep telling yourself you're not 😒
A dress is the most gender specific outfit there is..

So if you were going to do it anyway, why as AIBU. I'm afraid this is the problem with some mumsnet OP who literally create threads to get validation for what they already think. There are certain subjects that we are all supposed to just sweepingly agree with, without thought or discussion because it's the thing now. If you descent on the view being put across and actually offer an alternative opinion or critique the subject. You are usually shot down in flames and accused of all sorts of things. Case in point OP accusing a lot of posters on here of being closed minded, homophobic because they didn't all rush to agree with her.

The real Christopher Robin of Winnie the Poo fame was often dressed as a girl by his mother (who wanted a daughter). He ended up not speaking to either parent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChristopherRobinn_Milne

OP, is this a trans thing? That would make more sense, at least. Given the theory that you don't know the gender of a child until they tell you.

Taking that to its logical conclusion it would mean you dress them in both masculine and feminine clothing. Not gender neutral as is being suggested (unless you are including non-binary as their future selves - in which case - dilemma!)

I didn't put baby dd in dresses. It's a pointless faff. So yabu.

I let 3 yo ds wear dresses when he wants to.

I am aware dresses used to be baby clothes in the past.

But I think because they didnt have the fabrics that now make baby gros the easiest most comfortable thing. You wouldn't put a baby in the type of clothes men wore back then.

That said, do what you like tbh.

A lot of different clothes styles were worn in the past, but it doesn't mean we want to or should wear them now!

Agree Buster it used to be very fashionable to bind women's feet in China, or for European women to be so tightly laced by corsets that their ribs became displaced...thank God we don't follow those customs anymore.

This is treating a baby like a toy or possession. I can't imagine too many boys would be thrilled to look back on their baby photos and find they were dressed in dresses by their Mum because 'she liked dresses'.

CRANK!!!

Oh goodness MaQueen the foot binding was horrendous, I read up about it again a few weeks back and the x rays of these poor women's feet is just so shocking. Those poor girls.

Coming back to this to say - yes I put DS (aged 7 months) in a christening gown. I'd forgotten that. It was seen as only mildly eccentric, I think, by friends and family.

He also had the odd longer top which I think may have been intended as a dress for a slightly smaller baby now (which is what we do with toddler DD's dresses that are too short but not too narrow for her, now).

So I didn't discount dresses on the grounds that they would have turned him into a girl or on the grounds that boys JUST DON'T WEAR DRESSES. And I wasn't averse to dressing him up - the biggest dress up occasion of his first year of life saw him in a gown.

But they are, as others have said, ridiculously impractical for small babies. I remember putting DD in one in a sling and deciding "never again".

A nice old fashioned smock and nappy, with woollen leggings for winter, would have been great in the 1920s. But now a vest or babygro are much more sensible.

Why would you say that you don't want your child to have to conform to norms but then do that by forcing them into another set of very restrictive norms? This child has pink bottles, pink muslins, 'feminine' swaddles and now is going to be put into a dress. That's just swapping one set of conformist norms for another rather than challenging norms.

Honestly, I think parents who behave like this are just as bad as parents who try and 'reprogram' a gay child or won't let little girls wear trousers or boys dresses when that is their expressed preference. They're different sides of the same coin and are all parents trying to impose their preferred identity on a child. Really unhealthy.

Buster I read a book called The Binding Chair (I think) and it's haunted me, ever since.

I'll look into that Ma I do like gory stuff even though it makes me sick too!

It baffles me that so many so many people seem to have such a strong opinion on whether you should put your DS in a dress or not. I couldn't care less. If that is what you want to do then crack on.

I wouldn't, myself. I don't like dresses. DS did have some lovely pink and purple baby grows though. He only got mistaken for a girl once, and it really didn't bother me (why would it?). And if at 3 he wants a dress, I'll buy him a dress.

And to those saying "poor child" and the like - why?

Notomatoes I personally think it's a bit odd to go and buy your baby boy a dress to wear, I'm not sure why that is so weird! It's different if the child asks for such an item but to go to a shop and purchase a dress for a boy just because you want him to wear a dress is odd, maybe I'm not PC enough, or I'm old fashioned it just seems kind of strange. Tbh I don't really care that much as I've no idea who the Op is anyway.

All babies did wear dresses male or female until relatively recently: less than 50 years ago.

Particularly in summer they are great. A dress will cover the babies legs without encasing them as a babygro does and babygros can be too hot in the summer. A short romper leaves the legs exposed and you may want the baby covered.

A dress covers the baby and leaves its legs free and cool and makes nappy changes easier.

Why the hell is it so wrong to put a boy of a few weeks old in them?

BusterGonad

You can have your opinion all you like, and you can think it weird and odd and all those other words. I just don't get why people care what other people dress their children in. Let them get on with it.

Make your Ds a big A-line T shirt. Stop using him to make a point.

I find that argument of "oh well in the olden days, people used to...." as justification for things so utterly bizarre. They used to put brandy in babies' milk and leave them in the pram outside shops "relatively recently" too....

notomatoes I'm I in the wrong forum? I thought this was MNet and AIBU! I just feel a bit sorry for the child involved, I think it's quite dysfunctional to dress a boy as a girl when that child has no input in it. Obviously at the moment the child is a baby and doesn't understand but will the child still be wearing dresses at age one? Two? Etc...

Fenella

I find it particularly odd that what the Royal Family did years ago in official, formal pictures of event like Christenings, is used as any sort of support for the OP's point

FreeNiki

I do take your point about nappy changes being easier with no poppers

But excess frill round the bottom of anything is not practical in other ways