April 12, 2005
For kids, looks matter
Do parents discriminate against some of their children? According to a study by Dr. Andrew Harrell, executive director of the University of Alberta’s Population Research Laboratory, more attractive children tend to be better cared for than their less attractive counterparts.
Harrell’s researchers set up shop outside 14 different supermarkets, observing more than 400 parents and their young (two to five-year-old) children for ten minutes each. They discovered that only 1.2% of the least attractive children were buckled into the seat of their parent’s grocery cart, compared with 13.3% of the most attractive youngsters (whose looks were graded on a one-to-ten scale). Parents of less attractive children also allowed them to wander further away than better-looking children.
Darwinism in action? Harrell thinks so, much to the indignation of Canadian parents: he believes we’re unconsciously more likely to lavish attention on attractive children simply because they're our best genetic material.
As FuturePundit’s Randall Parker points out, other factors may also be at play:
Another possible interpretation is that the parents of less attractive children have genetic sequences that make them more lackadaisical toward their children or less concerned about risks or perhaps more worried about other things (e.g. having enough money to buy the food). Perhaps the parents who have less attractive children are less intelligent on average. One could adjust for this by watching parents who have multiple children of different levels of attractiveness. Also, one could measure parental attractiveness and look for symbols of parental economic status (e.g. the economic value and type of the car the parents get into when they leave the supermarket). Still, I think the researchers are right that parents react more favorably toward more attractive children.
Parker thinks that Harrell’s findings argue for genetic engineering: if all children are genetically engineered to be beautiful, then parents would be more likely to protect and less likely to abuse them. Perhaps, but there is also some evidence to suggest that better-looking children are more vulnerable to sexual abuse or harassment. Here, at least, genetic engineering might cause as many problems as it would solve.
Posted by Stephen at 6:55 PM in Humanity | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
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