Why babies resemble the father

And both my mother and mother-in-law thought their children looked only like their fathers. That children look more like their fathers is a common idea. In , two researchers set out to determine whether it was, in fact, true. The children were determined to look most similar to their biological fathers. Read: Stay-at-home dads are reshaping American masculinity. This seems like it makes sense, at least within a certain retrograde framework. As the thinking goes, evolution might prefer babies who look like their dads, as maternity is clear while paternity is in doubt.

Researchers stayed curious about this question. They theorized that this ambiguity might be advantageous if the paternity is unclear. Platek thinks the data are distorted by unclear paternity, which he estimates occurs in 2 to 30 percent of births. Babies were classified as "looking like dad" if both parents noted some resemblance. It turned out that little ones who looked like their dad spent the equivalent of 2. Those extra daddy days meant the child got more adult supervision.

Dads who spent time with their children were also more likely to learn about any health issues that needed to be addressed, and to know if children wanted for things like clothing, food or other necessities, the researchers suggested. In turn, this translated to better health relative to babies who didn't resemble dad, at least based on subjective health ratings by the parents, as well as hospital visits and asthma episodes, the study authors found.

This behavior has its roots in evolution, the researchers suggested in the study, which was published Jan. Evolutionary theory predicts that parents will spend more time caring for children who are genetically related to them, thus upping the odds that those children grow up, have babies of their own and pass on their genes, the researchers wrote in the paper. A similar study in with a much larger sample size found that, in fact, most infants resemble both parents equally. But then the problem with that is, resemblances are highly subjective.

Add to this the fact that babies grow and change so much in the first year and every year after that. Some will start out with the spitting image of one parent, but as they grow they end up looking much more like the other.

Or will a striking resemblance shock even the most detached father into bonding with his child? Whilst the jury is still out on proving this theory as a hard fact, based on your family does this ring true for you? Did your first-born look more like you or your partner at birth?