May 03, 2005
The title is "Ugly Children May Get Parental Short Shrift". The premise? Parents are more likely to neglect ugly kids (define "ugly"?) than good-looking kids. The research is from Canada, so there's another reason to be skeptical.
You've got to be kidding me. Based on observations in a supermarket, these "researchers" are able to surmise how much or how little parents care for and love children of varying levels of cuteness? First of all who comes up with this "10-point scale" for judging which kids are cute and which ones are ugly?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.
Here's the big point. Anyone who is a parent knows that how much they love the child drives how cute they think their kid is - not the other way around. Objectively speaking, some kids may not be gorgeous but most often their parents think they are!
And a supermarket is supposed to be so ideal for such observations? You ever been to Stop & Shop with you're kids? So many factors go into whether or not you strap the kid in or allow him to wander more than 10 feet from you! Is the parent harried and distracted? Did they forget to strap the child in? Is the particular child so good about sitting in the cart that the parent doesn't even think to strap them in? Has experience taught the parent that their child is not likely to stray far or does the child always come back when they get too far away? Is the child merely walking toward an eye-catching product on the shelf or a display as opposed to just blithely wandering?
I mean, what the hell? Is the adult with them even their parent?
Here's a real gem from the article:
DUH!!! Older parents are usually more experienced and confident parents and worry less. Younger parents tend to be much more nervous and hovering over little kids because it's all so new to them.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.
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."
Posted by: Gary at
12:50 PM
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