[AnnieBL]

That's interesting, Annie. I seem to recall that back then, boy babies were dressed in rather frilly, feminine looking gowns, hats, etc., so maybe the parents just carried the tradition over into early childhood. I have similar early photos of relatives of English descent that were dressed in what we today would see as girly clothes.

Or, maybe your grandfather had a female gender identity, and expressed a desire to wear the same clothes as his sisters! There's no reason to believe that the instances of cross gender identity were any less frequent a hundred years ago than they are today.

Clara

Clara, I think that your first paragraph is probably correct. It was also often the case that clothes, as grown out of, were handed down to younger siblings regardless of gender provided that they more or less fitted. But my grandfather was the firstborn so that didn't apply in his case.

On the other hand, as a clergyman, he confessed to a liking for ecclesiastical robes, the more splendid the better, and his marriage certainly cannot be seen as a success. There possibly is some reason to believe that gender variance was less frequent then. It has been strongly suggested that firstly widespread administration of DES to pregnant women and subsequently xeno-estrogens in our environment may have produced a substantial increase in defective gender conditioning of the brains of at least genetically male fetuses.