Ugly Kids, Poor Parenting and Evolution...oh My!

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on the way home from running some errands today, and I caught a portion of a study that he was mentioning. The topic piqued my curiosity (and I am nothing, if not curious), so I decided to see if I could find any more information about the study Rush referenced.

Here is what I found. A study out of the University of Alberta found that "ugly" children get a raw deal from parents, compared to "pretty" children.

Huh?

Basically, the study was conducted in this manner. Observers went to a grocery store and observed the attentiveness of parents to their children.
"The researchers noted if the parents belted their youngsters into the grocery cart seat, how often the parents' attention lapsed and the number of times the children were allowed to engage in potentially dangerous activities like standing up in the shopping cart. They also rated each child's physical attractiveness on a 10-point scale."

The study found that "ugly" children tended not to be belted into the shopping cart as often and were more likely to be allowed to wander out of sight. The "ugly" child got worse treatment when a man was in charge and when the parent was older.

The best part of all...the underlying reason that parents treated the "ugly" kids worse. According to the article I read, "Dr. W. Andrew Harrell, executive director of the Population Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta and the leader of the research team, sees an evolutionary reason for the findings: pretty children, he says, represent the best genetic legacy, and therefore they get more care."

So evolution is to blame. DUH, why didn't I think of that? The parent is obviously just employing some of that higher-level evolutionary thinking and is conciously neglecting the "ugly" child so that he will fall prey to the "survival of the fittest" theory. Of course, that makes perfect sense.

Thankfully, there are still those among us who haven't completely lost their minds.

The article goes on: "Dr. Robert Sternberg, professor of psychology and education at Yale, said he saw problems in Dr. Harrell's method and conclusions, for example, not considering socioeconomic status.
"Wealthier parents can feed, clothe and take care of their children better due to greater resources," Dr. Sternberg said, possibly making them more attractive. "The link to evolutionary theory is speculative."

You think?

But not to be deterred from his faulty study, Dr. Harrell said, "Like lots of animals, we tend to parcel out our resources on the basis of value...Maybe we can't always articulate that, but in fact we do it. There are a lot of things that make a person more valuable, and physical attractiveness may be one of them."

Maybe what makes a person more "valuable" is the fact that we are not animals, Dr. Harrell. We are beautiful, complex, thinking, creative human beings, a miraculous creation of an all-powerful God who sees our worth beyond our outward appearances and who gave each of us that capability as well.

Maybe it has nothing to do with evolution or ugliness or bad parenting. Maybe the study is just another faulty, misleading attempt to prove a theory based on assumptions: the theory of evolution.

For the record, we went to Meijer today. My little girl wasn't properly strapped in the cart. Want to know the real reason? The seatbelt was broken and I have a rather determined little tyke on my hands. Did anyone think of that?

And just for the record, no....my child is not "ugly"!