EARLY AMERICA SEX, MARRIAGE, CHILDREN, GAYS, LESBIANS, BOYS AS GIRLS, ABORTION, BREECHING, FAMILY AND OTHER MYTHS. PART 8

BREECHING

At about six years of age boys were BREECHED. This involved removing them from their dresses and stays, shaving their heads and fitting wigs, giving them clothing befitting an adult male of their station and expecting them to act like young adults. The social implications of breeching changed with time. In the early years, boys were not yet men until they passed through adolescence. In the middle and later periods, breeching fully initiated them into the world of men. SOURCE: The Writer's Guide, Everyday Life in Colonial America From 1607 - 1783. Dale Taylor. Weiter's Digest Books (1997) p. 131

BREECHING BOYS http://histclo.com/style/skirted/Dress/breech.html

The status of boys in English society changed over the period. Until they were breeched, boys were considered women. After adolescence they were men. In the intervening years they were neither during the early period. With time, breeching came to signify acceptance as men. This change occurred in England about 1680, but until then, boys were a perfectly acceptable outlet for male sexuality. Since the prevailing English view of sexuality was based in power and the submission to power, no man would willingly submit to another man. A boy, however, who was less than a man and may have been considered a woman, was under no stigma at all in providing sex, and no male lost any standing by taking it. This places special relevance on the boys sent to Virginia in 1607 and other early settlements, but would surely have run afoul of the New England strictures against nonprocreative sex, although the aristocratic nature of Chesapeake society almost assuredly meant English aristocratic practices were continued without comment. Needless to say, the records contain little about pederasty. SOURCE: The Writer's Guide, Everyday Life in Colonial America From 1607 - 1783. Dale Taylor. Weiter's Digest Books (1997) pp. 127-28

CONTINUE ON TO EARLY AMERICA SEX, MARRIAGE, CHILDREN, GAYS, LESBIANS, BOYS AS GIRLS, ABORTION, BREECHING, FAMILY AND OTHER MYTHS. PART 9