Ugly people make bad parents

CP:

The next time you see a child wandering lost and alone in the grocery store, sneak a peek at the parents.

New research from the University of Alberta suggests there’s a good chance they’re ugly.

“Unattractive parents are less likely than attractive parents to supervise their children closely,” said Andrew Harrell.

He’s the same social scientist who took a fair bit of heat last year when he presented evidence suggesting parents pay more attention to attractive children.

Now he’s onto new findings bound to stir up further familial feelings.

“The unattractive parents may be ugly because they have had economic difficulties, health problems, diabetes, poor eyesight, psychological and physical hardships that distract them,” Harrell offered as an explanation.

“They have their own personal concerns and they have less time to be attentive to their children,” he added. “They are in such physical and psychological misery they are not there.”

Harrell admitted his limited data can’t prove the theory since his team never interviewed the parents or children who were observed.

But his argument could explain why a child can drown in a swimming pool even though a parent is close by and supposedly watching, he said.

Harrell, director of the university’s Population Research Laboratory, began studying parents in grocery stores.

His team went to 14 stores in Edmonton to observe 861 single parents with one child roughly between the ages of one and seven in tow.

Observers found that 16 percent of homely parents lost sight of their children at least once compared to 10 percent of attractive parents.

That corresponds roughly to 89 inattentive, ugly parents and 30 inattentive, attractive ones.

“That may not seem big, but people, for the most part, don’t lose sight of kids,” Harrell said. “So that’s pretty strong.”

If the homely parents had ugly children, the neglect was even worse, with 36 percent of parents letting their children out of sight.

“This inattentiveness is what happens. They don’t see the kids in distress and this is when accidents happen.”

Harrell acknowledges that ideas on beauty are subjective, but also noted scores on the parents’ looks were very similar among observers.

Parents were considered neglectful if a child wandered more than three metres away—too far for the adult to intervene in time if the child got into trouble—or went out of sight around an aisle or across the store.

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