Opposite Sex Twins

[Stu]

I was reading an article by a woman who has opposite-sex twins and she was saying that they often shared or swapped clothes and, when younger, from being toddlers until about age 10, they didn't worry too much about what was for boys and what was for girls. If it fitted and was comfortable, they wore it. The writer didn't mention that her son wore dresses and skirts specifically but, from what she said, they were present in the children's wardrobes. After that age, the twins started to distinguish themselves from each other far more.

[Barleymower]

Can you post a link Stu?

[Stu]

I was initially going to post a link, but I can't as it's on a site of which my daughter (a paediatrician) pays to subscribe, unfortunately. The writer makes reference to a book called The Psychology of Twinship by Ricardo C. Ainslie if that helps.

[Uncle Al]

FYI - 'Opposite Sex Twins' are generally referred to as Fraternal Twins, as opposed to Identical Twins.
I've seen several Fraternal Twins dressed the same or wearing 'hand-me-downs' from older twin siblings.


Uncle Al

[mr seamstress]

I was initially going to post a link, but I can't as it's on a site of which my daughter (a paediatrician) pays to subscribe, unfortunately. The writer makes reference to a book called The Psychology of Twinship by Ricardo C. Ainslie if that helps.

Here is a link where the book can be read for free by joining website, Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/psychologyoftwin0000ains

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1006833 ... f_twinship

Update:
I found a link that gives a PDF Download of the book.

https://georgescreek.org/reading/the-ps ... -twinship/

Additional material.

https://annas-archive.org/md5/933c5a687 ... x_tr_hl=en

[GoSkirtGo]

FYI - 'Opposite Sex Twins' are generally referred to as Fraternal Twins, as opposed to Identical Twins.
I've seen several Fraternal Twins dressed the same or wearing 'hand-me-downs' from older twin siblings.


Uncle Al

Fraternal twins can just as easily be same-sex as opposite-sex (from two separate sperm fertilizing two separate eggs). Identical twins (genetically the same) are obviously always same-sex (except for when one of the twins transitions to live as the opposite gender and some intersex cases).

[STEVIE]

Identical twins (genetically the same) are obviously always same-sex (except for when one of the twins transitions to live as the opposite gender and some intersex cases).

GSG,
I hope you realise that you have "lit the blue touch paper" with this remark.
Be prepared for some fireworks, sorry I really mean civilised and reasoned debate!
Gender, especially transgender issues lead to some very interesting conversations around here.
Steve.

[Damon]

Three quarters of a century ago, when I was a boy, it was practically not acceptable for girls to wear trousers or shorts. Though I never knew any boy-girl twins I had Scottish relatives. In their family brothers and sisters all wore kilts. Later, in the 1960s my son and daughter sometimes both wore kilts. They looked very nice. There are several pictures of a young Princess Anne and Prince Charles dressed in kilts.

[STEVIE]

Three quarters of a century ago, when I was a boy, it was practically not acceptable for girls to wear trousers or shorts. Though I never knew any boy-girl twins I had Scottish relatives. In their family brothers and sisters all wore kilts. Later, in the 1960s my son and daughter sometimes both wore kilts. They looked very nice. There are several pictures of a young Princess Anne and Prince Charles dressed in kilts.

Damon, in the context of this thread the attitudes of some families dressing their children in kilts is irrelevant.
The British royal family's attitude to tartan is as cynical and superficial now as it was in George IV's time.
Boys being put in kilts was simply a middle class status symbol.
I can go as far back in memory and the adult men, the fathers of those kilted boys very very rarely wore it themselves.
Steve

[Damon]

Damon, in the context of this thread the attitudes of some families dressing their children in kilts is irrelevant.
The British royal family's attitude to tartan is as cynical and superficial now as it was in George IV's time.
Boys being put in kilts was simply a middle class status symbol.
I can go as far back in memory and the adult men, the fathers of those kilted boys very very rarely wore it themselves.
Steve

You are correct in that. Kilts were expensive, even a boy's kilt cost about a week's wage for a working man. And boys in kilts were certainly a middle and upper class thing. My Scottish relatives were landed gentry and the children were kilted much of the time. I did see their father, referred to as 'The Laird' in a kilt on a couple of special occasions. My Grandfather was fond of saying to me that a boy did not need a reason to wear a kilt, but he needed a good reason not to wear one. Though I never saw him wear one. My own father was not Scottish. My mother was. And while she liked me to wear my kilt she never made me. She would ask me to and I usually did. My Scottish cousin Robert, who was approximately my age, went to a boarding school where the school uniform for boys was a kilt. So he spent most of his childhood wearing one. I also went to boarding school, but in Switzerland and we could wear what we liked. In my case that was mostly jeans. I certainly had a privileged childhood which even at the time I could see was unfair, particularly compared to the poverty and real hunger I often saw in Italy whenever we passed through Naples on the way to the holiday villa my parents rented. I think I was a closet socialist by the time I was ten. Though I don't see how my comment was irrelevant to the thread about dressing boy/girl twins alike. Most parents don't even dress same sex twins alike, but if they wanted to, it would mean the girl twin wearing pants or shorts as no one is going to put them in identical dresses. But kilts would be acceptable and kids' kilts these days are comparatively cheap to buy. My own son was rather like me. Nobody made him but he still liked to wear a kilt quite often when he was younger. And his Dad, me, often did too, casually rather than on special occasions and to keep him company.