Figure 1.--Here we see a Zurich school group in 1930. We suspect that it was in the early spring as the children ll wear sweaters. The voys are wearing both knee socks and long stockings. One boy has rolled doen his long stockings so they looked like knee socks. Apparently he did not like them. Presumably mother insisted. There is no way of telling just why he did not like them. Also notice how the boys wore belts over their sweaters, not on their pants.

One interesting question is the populsarity of long stockings. Mothers liked thm because they kept the children warm. Children gettig a chill is a concern for mothers around the world, especially a country blike Switzerland that experiences cold winters. Some mothers may have also thought that they were nore appropriate when dressing up or more modesty. The modesty concerns may have been more associated with girls. What the children though is another interesting question. Younger boys may not have thought much about it. We have noted reports from German boys that they were uncomfortable. Some mothers seem to have insisted that boys wear long tockings even though they complained, especially during the winter. Older boys began to conmplain as they thought that the long stockings and associated support straps were girlish. We do not have similar reports from Switzerland because our information is more limited. We suspect that Swiss boys had very similar thoughts to German boys. While we do not have much information from Switzerland, the photographic record does suggest a basic similasrity between Germany and Switzerland. We are less certain about girls' attitudes. A reader provides some further insights, "We have several accounts (in Germany, not Switzerland) of boys rolling down their long stockings for various reasons. Many boys liked the flexibility of being able to roll down their stockings in warmer weather or for greater freedom when hiking and then rolling them up again in the evening when the temperatures dropped. They didn't necessarily object to wearing long stockings in principle since they were so common among boys of their own age group, and I have read one account where a boy actually preferred wearing shorts with long stockings to long trousers simply because with the shorts he could choose whether to have his knees covered whereas that was not possible with long trousers. Of course there is no way of knowing how prevalent this attitude was. I suspect that attitudes to long stockings in Switzerland were very similar to those in Germany. Another point, implied by your comment, was that conservative mothers often insisted on long stockings, even for older boys, as a mark of respect to elders and as evidence that a boy did not yet enjoy the status of an adult. So, from the latter point of view, some boys undoubtedly did object to long stockings because of their clear signal to the world of their continuing adolescence. We have accounts in Germany that also make this point very clear. But most German (and, I suspect, Swiss) boys simply accepted the wearing of long stockings with Strapsleibchen as normal for boys up to the age of about 14 years."

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Created: 6:57 AM 6/2/2010
Last updated: 6:57 AM 6/2/2010