Breeching (boys)

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Breeching was the occasion when a small boy was first dressed in breeches or trousers. From the mid-16th century^[1] until the late 19th or early 20th century, young boys in the Western world were unbreeched and wore gowns or dresses until an age that varied between two and eight.^[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.

Breeching was an important rite of passage in the life of a boy, looked forward to with much excitement, and often celebrated with a small party. It often marked the point at which the father became more involved with the raising of a boy.^[3]

Reasons

The main reason for keeping boys in dresses was toilet training, or the lack thereof.[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. Dresses were also easier to make with room for future growth, in an age when clothes were much more expensive than now for all classes.

The age of reason was generally considered to be about seven, and breeching corresponded roughly with that age for much of the period.

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.

For working-class children, about whom even less is known than their better-off contemporaries, it may well have marked the start of a working life. The debate between his parents over the breeching of the hero of Tristram Shandy (1761) suggests that the timing of the event could be rather arbitrary; in this case it is his father who suggests the time has arrived.^[4] The 17th-century French cleric and memoirist François-Timoléon de Choisy is supposed to have been kept in dresses until he was eighteen.