If you don’t have time for that, there are many, many woman-run small businesses online (check Etsy for starters) that sell handmade, good quality, interesting baby clothes of all varieties. Not usually cheap, but at least you can email the person whose hands created the garment–which is never true of the stuff you can buy in malls.

I think the idea that I could just give clothing identified as girls’ or boys’ to other people’s children with absolutely no concern for the sex of their child simply because *I* is based on assuming that I’m buying gifts for people who are equally indifferent to gender color codes. I am not. In some cases I choose to do it anyway, with the assumption that the worst thing that will happen is that the kid will never wear the clothes. But in others, I think the negative consequences of breaking that rule would be quite severe, and so I try to find something that doesn’t make me totally want to puke while not completely freaking out the parents of the gift-receiver.

That would make a lot of sense. I live in a very-NOT-progressive area and all one has to do to figure out which kid’s clothing section one is in is to look at what the colors of the clothes are. The girl’s sections are ALL pink and purple (with the occasional hint of lime green) while the boy’s sections are all very dark colors like red, brown, green, etc. Even in the sections for teenagers, the guys’ colors are still mostly dark while the girls’ are very bright.

And yet I know earlier this summer I was at a Kohl’s with a friend and they had a section of yellow and green things for infants, though it was smaller than the pink and blue section and sort of on a back wall.

Maybe they do market research to decide how many people in the area might be “progressive” and/or might not know the sex of the baby ahead of time, and then decide how much variety to carry in infant clothes?

Black would be the worst color in the world in my house, as I have two dogs. My child would look like an unkempt woolly beast. I would probably get Child Services called on me.

What dichotomy, where? Gymboree’s been selling primary colors and neutrals for 0-6s for at least 15 years, in nearly ever mall in the US. You can easily dodge pink and blue at Baby Gap, too, in all the same malls. Look at the baby racks at Target or Sears–they’re hardly a solid sea of pastels. Now, if some parents would rather spend bigger bucks on equivalent gear with hipper(?) tags, I’m sure Nanufacture will be glad to take the cash instead. But they’re not offering baby clothes in *any* colors or combinations you can’t already buy elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere.

And I’ll warn again that, while black is great for hiding baby stains, it also showcases carpet lint and spit-up better than any other color.