Do You Treat Your Ugly Children Worse?
coselmed
1,114 Posts
May 3, 2005
Ugly Children May Get Parental Short Shrift
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Parents would certainly deny it, but Canadian researchers have made a startling assertion: parents take better care of pretty children than they do 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.
Age - of parent and child - also played a role. Younger adults were more likely to buckle their children into the seat, and younger children were more often buckled in. Older adults, in contrast, were inclined to let children wander out of sight and more likely to allow them to engage in physically dangerous activities.
Although the researchers were unsure why, good-looking boys were usually kept in closer proximity to the adults taking care of them than were pretty girls. The researchers speculated that girls might be considered more competent and better able to act independently than boys of the same age. The researchers made more than 400 observations of child-parent interactions in 14 supermarkets.
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."
Dr. Robert Sternberg, professor of psychology and education at Yale, said he saw problems in Dr. Harrell's method and conclusions, for example, not considering socioeconomic status.
"Wealthier parents can feed, clothe and take care of their children better due to greater resources," Dr. Sternberg said, possibly making them more attractive. "The link to evolutionary theory is speculative."
But Dr. Harrell said the importance of physical attractiveness "cuts across social class, income and education."
"Like lots of animals, we tend to parcel out our resources on the basis of value," he said. "Maybe we can't always articulate that, but in fact we do it. There are a lot of things that make a person more valuable, and physical attractiveness may be one of them."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/health/03ugly.html?incamp=article_popular_1
Ugly kids, be quiet!
Ugly Children May Get Parental Short Shrift
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Parents would certainly deny it, but Canadian researchers have made a startling assertion: parents take better care of pretty children than they do 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.
Age - of parent and child - also played a role. Younger adults were more likely to buckle their children into the seat, and younger children were more often buckled in. Older adults, in contrast, were inclined to let children wander out of sight and more likely to allow them to engage in physically dangerous activities.
Although the researchers were unsure why, good-looking boys were usually kept in closer proximity to the adults taking care of them than were pretty girls. The researchers speculated that girls might be considered more competent and better able to act independently than boys of the same age. The researchers made more than 400 observations of child-parent interactions in 14 supermarkets.
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."
Dr. Robert Sternberg, professor of psychology and education at Yale, said he saw problems in Dr. Harrell's method and conclusions, for example, not considering socioeconomic status.
"Wealthier parents can feed, clothe and take care of their children better due to greater resources," Dr. Sternberg said, possibly making them more attractive. "The link to evolutionary theory is speculative."
But Dr. Harrell said the importance of physical attractiveness "cuts across social class, income and education."
"Like lots of animals, we tend to parcel out our resources on the basis of value," he said. "Maybe we can't always articulate that, but in fact we do it. There are a lot of things that make a person more valuable, and physical attractiveness may be one of them."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/health/03ugly.html?incamp=article_popular_1
Ugly kids, be quiet!
Comments
You really don't! Do you find yourself buckling them up with great consistency then you would if they weren't so cute? Where would you say they rate on the 10-point scale?
Better yet, anyone think its fucked up to call little kids attractive? ...AYO!!
attractive in what sense? Either this indicates that our subjective standards for beuty are being pushed on younger and younger kids, or its written by a child molester.
Imagine, fat kids, mabye if you went bulemic your parents would love you more!
Seriously though, I don't know how parents can let their kids wander away from them the way things are today. I'm like a hawk with those dudes.
G*d don't like ugly.
From my Psychology book:
"Can all human beings agree on what makes someone attractive? Research that seeks to answer this question has generally focused on facial features. What makes a man attractive to women are large eyes, a large chin, prominent cheekbones, and a big smile (Cunningham et al. 1990); men prefer women with a small nose, prominent cheekbones, and a big smile (Cunningham et al., 1986). Findings of what constitutes attractiveness are consistent across cultures. For example, when shown photographs of faces of Hispanic, Asian, White, and African American women, ratings of attractiveness by recent Asian and Hispanic male immigrants were similar to those of White and African American men (Cunningham et al., 1995).
"We also prefer faces that are symmetrical (Grammer & Thornhill, 1994). Thus, one proposal is that people's preference for symmetry reflects a desire to choose a mate who "looks healthy" because facial asymmetries may reflect the presence of disease (Grammer & Thornhill, 1994; Thornhill & Gangestad, 1993). There is also evidence that people prefer men's and women's faces that are "feminized"--that is, faces that reflect higher levels of female hormones (Perret et al., 1998)" (Kosslyn/Rosenberg, pg. 696).
and:
"Once you evaluate someone as beautiful, various expectations and beliefs come to mind. Just as once you've identified an object as an apple, you know it has seeds inside, once you classify a person as attractive, you believe that he or she is likely to be kind, nurturing, and sensitive, and to have other positive attributes (Dion et al., 1972)" (Kosslyn/Rosenberg, pg. 151).
sources:
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Journal of Comparative Psychology
[i]Human Nautre[i]
To expand on this, some of the most recent studies developed some sort of coefficient or ratio of facial symmetry that generally predicts whether someone is considered "attractive" or not. The same study came up with a face that people of all races from around the world found attractive. Essentially, to me, the female face looked like a young Tia Carrera.
It's not your fault. Even Dr. Harrell says, "Like lots of animals, we tend to parcel out our resources on the basis of value." You were only doing what felt natural.
Cosign.