In order to ascertain appropriate clothing requirements for young children it is necessary to take into account their ongoing physical development. To this end, a lifestyle survey of infants was carried out (Okada 1990). This survey used a sample of 622 boys and girls under the age of 6 years and made particular reference to the youngsters’ clothing preferences.
The following observations were made:
1) Hayashi’ s Quantification Method Ⅲ was applied to 24 motor skills related to the subject’s ability to get dressed and undressed. The data, plotted along two axes of a graph, resulted in a clear ‘U’ curve. A correlation was thus established between motor skills and scores. This study provided useful data with respect to clothes’ design for young children.
2) With the exception of tying and untying drawstrings, Okada’ s data suggests that children show more dexterity (dressing and undressing themselves) at an earlier age than suggested by Yamashita (1935). Socio-cultural factors reflecting the time span between the two sets of data may account for this difference. In other respects, both sets of data show a number of similarities; for example, their developmental stages are in regular order and girls were proven to have higher levels of dexterity at an earlier age than boys.
3) In order to foster a sense of independence it is necessary to encourage youngsters to dress and undress themselves at the age correspond with their developmental stage. With this in mind, we hope the results of this research will better help mothers and carers make more appropriate clothing choices for their children.
