I've always thought the mothers crossdressing boys thing was a wishful hindsight fiction dreamed up by mtf CD's, but I'm a little startled to find this about Ernest Hemingway, on Wikipedia:

"His mother had wanted to bear twins, and when this did not happen, she dressed young Ernest and his sister Marcelline (eighteen months his senior) in similar clothes and with similar hairstyles, maintaining the pretense of the two children being "twins." Grace Hemingway further feminized her son in his youth by calling him "Ernestine."[3] (Though much is made of this by biographers -- especially Kenneth S. Lynn -- it should be noted that middle-class Victorian boys were often treated in this manner.)"

I know that you can find pics of young Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt in girlish garb, too, which confirms the idea that this was just a Victorian fashion. Anyhow, it's odd....and the Wiki piece on Hemingway is a good read, here.

I'm not sure where to post this, and certainly won't mind if it's moved to the lounge.