I have enjoyed the many letters which have appeared in your magazine from ladies who had advocated dressing boys in pinafores, short panted velvet suits, kilts, and even frocks. I quite agree that the main idea must be to make the boy realize that he is still a child, and as such must be obedient, neat, and tidy at all times. I disagree however, with some of the suggestions. First, with the short panted suits, even if made of velvet and worn with lace blouses. After all, a suit, whether short or long panted, is boys’ wear and a sign he has left the really juvenile stage. Likewise, I object to a real dress as being too effeminizing of the boy.

But there are still a number of ways of dressing the boy, be he seven or seventeen, which will humiliate him and make him understand that in the eyes of the ladies and girls in his household he is still considered to be a mere child.

One had been suggested in letters, namely the kilt. This can be made very childish, by attaching a bodice to the kilt to give a pinafore dress effect, wearing it with a real blouse, having to wear over-the-knee stockings or little socks, rather than the boyish knee turn-down cuff stockings, and wearing under the kilt dainty lace panties, and for best even a lace-trimmed petticoat.

Second, the boy can be kept in rompers with cute gathered bloomer legs. Certainly no boy can ape the man, or even try to sneak a smoke when dressed as a boy-toddler in pastel shade-colored rompers, the bodice part of which could be embroidered with a little bunny rabbit or a duckling or some other nursery motif.

But, particularly in this letter, I want to mention a third costume for dress disciplining the unruly boy. It is the smock, or frock-smock, as it is sometimes called. On the Continent this is a boy’s costume, but granted a little boy’s, so there should be little criticism that the boy is being put into skirts. Yet, it does have a skirt, and as I understand it boys just do not like skirts of any kind, unless it be Scottish boys, or boys of other nations where the skirt-like garment has been associated with the male.

The smock is worn by smaller boys on the Continent over their short pants and shirts, especially to school. So there is no good reason why such a garment should not be worn by boys of other countries, and by older boys at that. Anyway, that is the garment which I chose to put my boy, then fourteen years of age, into when he is out of school. He is still wearing them when not at technical school, at the age of eighteen. Oh, he didn’t like them then, and even more so now he does not like them, but they are the perfect discipline garment, especially when worn with pinafores.

My eighteen year old son looks just like a child in his pastel shade smock, and pinafore of dazzling white, and what’s more he still acts like one, subdued and veiy self-conscious, and most docile and servile. These smocks are simple little garments to make. I make them with no sleeves, a round neck, and no waist. So hanging from the shoulder they are made with the skirt quite wide, but very short, just covering the boy’s bottom. He wears little ankle socks or none at all, and sometimes patent single strap girls' shoes. His smocks might be in solid pastel shades or pretty patterns, and may be in glaced cotton or linen, or, for best, in silk.

Unlike the Continent boys who wear short trousers under their smocks, I prefer that my own son wears matching little bloomers which just show under his smock. Or, if he has been extra naughty, NO panties at all! In either case, he is careful not to give any view of what he does or does not wear under his smock. Perhaps without the protection of any pants at all, just with the smock, the boy feels even more unprotected, and so is even more circumspect as to deportment. Mothers, try smocks for your son, from eight to eighteen years!

'Another Petticoating Mum'

I think this is the first letter I have published concerning smocks for petticoat-disciplining purposes. It is amazing, after more than three years of publication. If you look at pictures of children painting pictures you will see the girls wearing full smocks with often a ruffled neck and loose shoulder frills. They look adorable, although I think that they should have puffy sleeves - this mother apparently makes them without sleeves.

Did any male readers have to wear smocks when they were children?
Susan