Scientists Are Trying To Tell Me That Babies Stop Being Irresistible At What Age?
My daughter at six is still the most adorable thing I cast my eyes on each day. I don't want to diminish her brothers' incredible good looks but she still has squishy cheeks, tiny toes, and an open, trusting smile.
But she is about to lose her first tooth and the adult one is growing in behind it in a very awkward position.
And I wonder, is this the last few days of her unbearable cuteness? A friend of mine said recently that the ugly days begin with the first lost tooth and don't end until the last zit is gone.
According to scientists, at age six, she is already past her peak of adorableness. They asked 60 adults to rank children's attractiveness and likeability from infancy to age 6 and half. The study found that people found infants the most attractive and likeable but there was as a sharp dropoff of attractiveness and likeability at the age of four and half.
The researchers noted that is the same approximate time that children's facial structure changes. They stop looking like ewoks and more like adults. Psychology Today explains:
Infants have a special set of features, such as a protruding forehead, a large head, a round face, big eyes, and a small nose or mouth. As a species, we have evolved to be attracted to these features and find them adorable. These cues make us feel soft and protective, whether or not we're biologically relatives -- which, in evolutionary terms, increases the likelihood of a baby's survival.
The preschool years are also the same time as when kids are old enough to be more independent -- from pouring their own milk to setting the table and making their own friends. As an evolutionary explanation it makes total sense that we perceive kids as less cute when they are also more capable. As Jena Pincott says: Children's faces lose some of their universal babyish appeal right around the age that they don't need it anymore (to survive).
Except my kid. It may be my bias towards my youngest child, but her appeal is just as strong as when she was four and half minus a day. But I will re-visit this issue when she is covered with zits.
Can you pinpoint an age when your kids lost their babyish looks? Do you think they are more or less attractive as they get older?
Last year, I asked: mommy wars are they fact or fiction?
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