Ugly Children Get Stiffed
Nicolas Bakalar reports in The New York Times that parents take better care of pretty children than ugly ones:
Researchers at the University of Alberta carefully observed how parents treated their children during trips to the supermarket. They found that physical attractiveness made a big difference.The researchers noted if the parents belted their youngsters into the grocery cart seat, how often the parents' attention lapsed and the number of times the children were allowed to engage in potentially dangerous activities like standing up in the shopping cart. They also rated each child's physical attractiveness on a 10-point scale.
The findings, not yet published, were presented at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
When it came to buckling up, pretty and ugly children were treated in starkly different ways, with seat belt use increasing in direct proportion to attractiveness. When a woman was in charge, 4 percent of the homeliest children were strapped in compared with 13.3 percent of the most attractive children. The difference was even more acute when fathers led the shopping expedition - in those cases, none of the least attractive children were secured with seat belts, while 12.5 percent of the prettiest children were.
Homely children were also more often out of sight of their parents, and they were more often allowed to wander more than 10 feet away.
Researchers squabbled about the reasons why this might be:
Dr. W. Andrew Harrell, executive director of the Population Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta and the leader of the research team, sees an evolutionary reason for the findings: pretty children, he says, represent the best genetic legacy, and therefore they get more care.Not all experts agree. Dr. Frans de Waal, a professor of psychology at Emory University, said he was skeptical.
"The question," he said, "is whether ugly people have fewer offspring than handsome people. I doubt it very much. If the number of offspring are the same for these two categories, there's absolutely no evolutionary reason for parents to invest less in ugly kids."
It's possible that this might be a side-effect of evolved human sexual preferences -- even though there's no sex involved here. For example, even if a woman isn't a lesbian, she still judges beauty of another woman the same way a man would -- youth, clear skin, symmetry, and waist-to-hip ratio (hourglass figure). Researchers have discovered that even infants recognize what as beautiful and not in humans -- debunking the notions that beauty is determined by some evil cabal high in the offices of Condé-Nast.
What we find beautiful in a woman directly (i.e., medically) corresponds with fertility -- from the hourglass figure, to youth, to facial and bodily symmetry (a sign in the EEA -- Environment Of Evolutionary Adaptedness -- that you didn't have parasites and were probably free of illness). As Donald Symons wrote in Evolution Of Human Sexuality, "Beauty is in the adaptations of the beholder."
I saw this article in the NY Times and read it aloud to my husband. What I thought was both funny and horrifything was the concept of an "ugly" child.
Good god. Poor kids.But what do I know? Both of my sons were very cute as they were growing up. They were to me, at least.
Deirdre B. at May 5, 2005 3:04 AM
Ever wonder why Arsenio used to wear purple suits? This is a very good book to read. Also, the author is a cupcake.
Crid at May 5, 2005 6:46 AM
Crid refers to "Survival of the Prettiest," by Nancy Etcoff, and he's right, it's a good book -- especially for anyone who read the recent Wall Street Journal science column on evolutionary psychology by Sharon Begley and wasn't immediately able to conclude that she's an idiot, or at least a lazy thinker, and a bad reporter. My mom sent me the article (it was subscription) and I just mailed it back to her with all the reasons why it's all of the above (plus a few xeroxed references), so I didn't blog it here. Begley tried to suggest that men really don't want really young women. Hello? Sharon, do you ever leave the WSJ and take a look at the world around you? It might be a good idea.
For example, she complains that women in their 20s were surveyed. Here's a bit of what I wrote my mother:
A big flaw I see in data is that college students are often surveyed. (Self-reported data is pretty suspect, too, especially in surveys of sexuality.) But men across cultures prefer younger women -- substantially younger women -- highly fertile women (ie, 22, etc.) -- even as they age and age. Studies bear this out. I’ve copied a page referencing D.T. Kenrick and Keefe, 1992, for example, which shows that men in their 30s prefer women who are roughly five years younger, and men in their 50s prefer women who are between 10-20 years younger. Or you can just go to any restaurant in Hollywood and count the 65-year-old rich, powerful men out with girls young enough to be their daughters. Or granddaughters.
PS David Buss' Evolution of Desire is excellent, too.
Amy Alkon at May 5, 2005 8:47 AM
And actually, Deirdre, the world of Judith Langlois and others show that we have evolved, standardized, human preferences for what is beautiful or attractive. She showed that even infants know beautiful from not. The idea that what is beautiful is simply a product of culture is not borne out by data.
Amy Alkon at May 5, 2005 8:49 AM
Amy! I cut this out of the paper for you when I was in Miami. I love the findings, though I think they're probably biased. The investigators made the observations themselves, so I suspect that they saw what they wanted to see to confirm their hypothesis -- at least to some extent:
"The researchers noted [...] how often the parents' attention lapsed"
-- what exactly does "lapsed attention" look like?
"They also rated each child's physical attractiveness on a 10-point scale."
-- That sounds VERY squishy. I wished they'd used defined criteria for attractiveness (eg, kids with braces get a zero), and that attractiveness were rated independently (ie, by other researchers) in a separate setting (ie, far away from the observations of lapsed attention, etc).
Still, I loved the image of parents not really giving a shit about their homely kids. Very funny!
Lena the Methods Dominatrix at May 5, 2005 5:02 PM
There's something not quite right about the idea of old men in white coats rating 5 year-olds by the degree to which they find themselves attracted to said group.
Little ted at May 6, 2005 11:26 AM
Sadly, anthropologists tend to be more of the ugly shoes and corduroy jackets with elbow patches school of dress...which makes me look like the bimbo of the Human Behavior & Evolution society! (Which I love.)
Amy Alkon at May 6, 2005 11:45 AM
PS Thank you, Methodologicalena...I thought it wasn't a very good study, but I think the conclusions make sense vis a vis other studies that are better.
Amy Alkon at May 6, 2005 11:46 AM
This is one of those studies that might be called "hypothesis generators." The results are interesting, but they raise questions that need to tested in a better-designed study.
Still, I think you could draw on these findings in making your arguments about the utter uselessness of ugly children.
Lena at May 6, 2005 12:11 PM
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