Increasing Awareness of Children’s Fashion in the Ottoman and Arab Middle Classes as a Parameter of Social and Cultural Changes in the Late Ottoman Period

Abstract

The economic and cultural encounter between the Ottoman Empire and the West during the nineteenth century influenced both Ottoman and Arab societies. Both underwent a process of redefining themselves as modern societies that was also affected by the rise of patriotism among the Arab and Ottoman middle classes, which led a redefinition of the family. The place of women, and by extension children, was reinvented in the sense that children were considered to determine not only their families’ future but also that of society and the Syrian/Arab or Ottoman nations and thus became more central in society. This familycentered attitude was partly influenced by the discourse on domesticity taking place at that time in Europe and America, which brought with it an intensive wave of consumerism.