Infant attractiveness predicts maternal behaviors and attitudes.

Abstract

The relations between infant attractiveness and maternal behavior were examined by observing mothers feeding and playing with their firstborn infants while they were still in the hospital after giving birth (N = 144) and again when the infants were 3 months of age (N= 115). The attitudes of the mothers toward their infants were also assessed. Mothers of more attractive infants were more affectionate and playful compared with mothers of less attractive infants. In contrast, the mothers of less attractive infants were more likely to be attentive to other people rather than to their infant and to engage in routine caregiving rather than affectionate behavior. The attitudes of the mothers of less attractive infants were also more negative than those of mothers of more attractive infants, but the number of differences in attitudes was not as great as the behavioral differences. Queen Victoria, who bore nine children, once said that ugly baby is a very nasty object (Fulford, 1964, p. 191). If current conventional wisdom is true, most modern-day mothers are either not as forthright as the Queen or they have considerably more positive attitudes about unattractive infants. It is commonly assumed that the attractiveness of an infant is neither evaluated nor important to parents; all offspring supposedly seem beautiful to doting new parents. The purpose of the study we report here is to examine the validity of this widely held belief by assessing the attitudes and behaviors of mothers toward their firstborn infants as a function of infant attractiveness. There is a literature suggesting that mothers may not be as sanguine about infant appearance as conventional wisdom would have us believe. Rather, mothers may treat their infants differently on the basis of the infant's attractiveness. Experimental laboratory studies have shown that attractive compared