Playing Favorites Update: ugly kids get less loving?
I stumbled across this article and my fascination with whether parents secretly have favorite children was rekindled.
I have been too interested with the question for awhile, and have yet to hear any parent admit to having a favorite kid. Arbusto theorizes that parental expectations and attachments may vary from child to child, suggesting that each relationship is too complex and unique for meaningful comparison. To Arbusto's credit, that sums up what most parents tell me, except they take it further and swear that comparison of one's children is literally impossible. As if the brain has a built in thought-regulator that censors urges of kid-comparison. Swear to God they love them all the same. Shah.
According to the article, some researchers in Canada claim ugly kids just aren't getting their fair share of Quality Parenting. They discovered this by following 400 people around 14 Canadian grocery stores, and recording parenting behaviors. Then they determined each child's attractiveness, on a 1-10 scale. I'm guessing the last part was where they put these ratings and observations into SPSS and had themselves a correlation search party.
Anyhow, here are some of the "striking" findings:
Ugly kids were less likely (1.2%) than pretty kids (13.3%) to have cart safety buckles snapped. Egad.
AND, not one male shopper buckled up an ugly kid! Good God.
Plus, get this, ugly kids were allowed to wander further from their parents! Cheese and rice.
AND, they were more likely to be allowed out of their parent's sight. Something must be done.
No word on how the magical attractive scale was conceived, unless Canada has a national standard I'm not aware of. I wonder if things like name-brand pimp gear got ugly kids bonus points. Think maybe people who spend chunks of time making kids cute for the grocery store might be more likely to buckle kids up and make sure they don't get un-cute? We seriously trust researchers to decide who has a pretty kid? I don't know how it is in Canada, but I saw these kinds of people all the time as a Psych undergrad, and I have serious doubts about their ability to guage attractiveness. Also, if some group of whitecoats was watching and writing stuff down, I would make damn sure I was looking like an A+ Mommy. You just never know what power a whitecoat may possess. Plus, and maybe this is just me, when a kid gets all out of hand at the store, they suddenly look kinda ugly. Obviously, I'm too lazy to get the article and see whether any of these concerns were dealt with. Whatever, I'm already sold on parents having favorites, so it fits for me.
I have been too interested with the question for awhile, and have yet to hear any parent admit to having a favorite kid. Arbusto theorizes that parental expectations and attachments may vary from child to child, suggesting that each relationship is too complex and unique for meaningful comparison. To Arbusto's credit, that sums up what most parents tell me, except they take it further and swear that comparison of one's children is literally impossible. As if the brain has a built in thought-regulator that censors urges of kid-comparison. Swear to God they love them all the same. Shah.
According to the article, some researchers in Canada claim ugly kids just aren't getting their fair share of Quality Parenting. They discovered this by following 400 people around 14 Canadian grocery stores, and recording parenting behaviors. Then they determined each child's attractiveness, on a 1-10 scale. I'm guessing the last part was where they put these ratings and observations into SPSS and had themselves a correlation search party.
Anyhow, here are some of the "striking" findings:
Ugly kids were less likely (1.2%) than pretty kids (13.3%) to have cart safety buckles snapped. Egad.
AND, not one male shopper buckled up an ugly kid! Good God.
Plus, get this, ugly kids were allowed to wander further from their parents! Cheese and rice.
AND, they were more likely to be allowed out of their parent's sight. Something must be done.
No word on how the magical attractive scale was conceived, unless Canada has a national standard I'm not aware of. I wonder if things like name-brand pimp gear got ugly kids bonus points. Think maybe people who spend chunks of time making kids cute for the grocery store might be more likely to buckle kids up and make sure they don't get un-cute? We seriously trust researchers to decide who has a pretty kid? I don't know how it is in Canada, but I saw these kinds of people all the time as a Psych undergrad, and I have serious doubts about their ability to guage attractiveness. Also, if some group of whitecoats was watching and writing stuff down, I would make damn sure I was looking like an A+ Mommy. You just never know what power a whitecoat may possess. Plus, and maybe this is just me, when a kid gets all out of hand at the store, they suddenly look kinda ugly. Obviously, I'm too lazy to get the article and see whether any of these concerns were dealt with. Whatever, I'm already sold on parents having favorites, so it fits for me.
posted by Lex Fori at
5:51 PM
3 Comments:
I didn't read this study either, but it seems self fulfilling to me. If a kid's hair isn't combed, has a dirty face, or stained clothes he will be "uglier". This lack of attention for a child's appearance probably correlates to a lack of attention paid to the child's behavior.
By
Anonymous, at 8:12 AM
Thanks for reading =)
In seriousness, it does sound like some self-fulfililng bullshit to me as well. I also agree that less care often causes the ugly, and not the other way around. Socioeconomic status probably factors in too, since resources usually improves chances of quality supervision and appearance. I tried to google-fu the paper, but no luck. What really got me about this study was that the researchers waxed philosophic about how this is probably Darwin-based evolution stuff. Seems really irresponsible for a social researcher to imply correlation equates with causation.
I would be interested in knowing if there were measureable differences in treatment among children of the same parent, and what other things (like birth order, gender, intellgience etc) might be related. That would give me something to really think about on this whole favorites thing. I'm sure lots of studies exist that I could find with a minimal degree of effort, but it's still in the realm of casual conversation at this point =) I may take the obsession further soon.
My mom should have hugged me more ;)
By
Lex Fori, at 1:09 PM
There are psychological studies about beauty. Even babies can identify a "more attractive" face. It's some ratio (that I don't quite remember what it is) that's all over our bodies. the distance between your knuckles, your thigh to your calf, torso to bottom half. The more of these ratios you have the more "attractive" you are found. And it's true in your face as well. Chin to nose, nose to top of head, other spacings in the face. Models almost always fit these ratios perfectly.
By
Arbusto, at 1:03 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home