The Claim: Babies Tend to Look Like Their Fathers
By ANAHAD O’CONNORMARCH 22, 2005
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THE CLAIM – Babies tend to look like their fathers.
THE FACTS – It’s one of the first questions to cross a new parent’s mind. Does the baby look like me? Studies suggest that, for fathers, the answer is usually yes.
In 1995, a study in Nature put the question to the test by having 122 people try to match pictures of children they didn’t know – at one year, 10 years and 20 years-- with photos of their mothers and fathers.
The group members correctly paired about half of the infants with their fathers, but their success rate was much lower matching infants and mothers. And matching the 20-year-olds with either parent proved to be just as hard.
The authors offered an evolutionary explanation for their findings: the phenomenon is a natural paternity test.
A father, unlike a mother, cannot always be sure a baby is his. If he spots a resemblance, the authors argued, he will know the child is his and will be more likely to protect and care for it, benefiting both mother and baby.
Another study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior in 2003, seems to support this.
The researchers took head shots of a group of people and morphed them with photos of baby faces without the subjects’ knowledge.
When they presented the subjects with the faces, the men were more likely to indicate they would adopt or spend time with the babies, male and female, who had more of their facial characteristics.
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The women in the study, however, showed no preference for children with their features.
THE BOTTOM LINE – Infants are more likely to resemble their dads. ANAHAD O’CONNOR
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A version of this article appears in print on March 22, 2005, on Page F00006 of the National edition with the headline: REALLY?. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
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