STUDY: Women Are More Squeamish About Abnormal-Looking Babies Than Men

WASHINGTON — Puzzling new research suggests women have a harder time than men looking at babies with facial birth defects. It's a surprise finding. Psychiatrists from the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, who were studying perceptions of beauty, had expected women to spend more time than men cooing over pictures of extra-cute babies. Nope.

Instead, the small study being published Wednesday raises more questions than it can answer.

First the background: The McLean team already had studied men and women looking at photos of adults' faces on a computer screen. They rated facial beauty, and could do various keystrokes to watch the photos longer. A keystroke count showed men put three times more effort into watching beautiful women as women put into watching handsome men.

Lead researcher Dr. Igor Elman wondered what else might motivate women. Enter the new baby study.

This time 13 men and 14 women were shown 80 photos of babies, 30 of whom had abnormal facial features such as a cleft palate, Down syndrome or crossed eyes. Participants rated each baby's attractiveness on a scale of zero to 100, and used keystrokes to make the photo stay on the screen longer or disappear faster.

Women pressed the keys 2.5 times more than men to make photos of babies with the facial abnormalities disappear, researchers reported in PLoS One, a journal of the Public Library of Science. That's even though they rated those babies no less attractive than the men had.

"They had this subliminal motivation to get rid of the faces," said Elman, who questions whether "we're designed by nature to invest all the resources into healthy-looking kids."

Both genders spent equal time and effort looking at photos of the normal babies.

The study couldn't explain the gender disparity. Elman noted that previous work has linked child abandonment and neglect to abnormal appearance, and even asked if the finding might challenge the concept of unconditional maternal love.

That's too far-reaching a conclusion, cautioned Dr. Steven Grant of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the study.

The work is part of broader research into how we normally form attachments and what can make those attachments go awry, work that tests if what people say matches what they do.

"Common sense would tell you one thing," Grant said. "This doesn't fit with common sense. It raises a question."

Comments

[8journey8]

A *study* of 13 men and 14 women? The sample is too small to draw any conclusions at all! C'mon, people. Try not to publish *results* until you have done your homework.

[Tara Stiles - Huffpost Blogger]

and not to generalize all men because studies are contradicted all the time so can ultimately be irrelevant, but it seems common sense that the men can look with a fresher eye at the photos of babies because they usually aren't wrapped up or sometimes even involved in decision making when it comes to having a baby. It could even be reasonably deducted from this particular study that the men have more compassion because they didn't click away as fast. It could also be reasonably deducted that the men typed slower than the women...now that would explain everything.

[Tara Stiles - Huffpost Blogger]

Seems that most women want to have a perfect looking baby and the sight of imperfection triggers the fear that they could possibly have a child that was imperfect. The fast clicking makes the imperfection go away and their fear that they might love an imperfect looking child of their own less than a perfect one. That seems like common sense.

[carly after]

Personally I have a hard time looking at pictures of children with abnormal facial features because I find it painful to think of what kinds of lives they have (the difficulties associated with a disability, the social rejection of looking different). So to spare myself this unnecessary pain - looking at a picture of the child will not do anything to help it - I don't look at them for as long. If it were one of my children I wouldn't love them any less and if I knew them in person I wouldn't spend less time with them then I would with other children. I would enjoy brightening the day of that child or helping them in some way (helping the family of a child with a cleft lip pay for surgery for instance) but you can't do that with a picture.

[PresidentRobertBooth]

It's almost as if we humans are some sort of primate, with deep primal instincts which, despite our modern technological trappings...are still incredibly powerful....almost as if they...."evolved"....somehow.

[dadw5boys]

All this test proves to me is that men woek harder to be fair and just than women who make decision quickly if the subject is not REALLY important to them personally.

[audadvnc]

I can believe this. I just saw a picture of Sarah Palin with her baby - it looked like a right-wing blogger! Ewww!!!

[historymatters]

no picking on the innocent baby, please.

[Bethab]

Or the icon...

[therealpixie]

Makes me wonder if there were any women scientists conducting the study. A woman would have known that gut wrench of sympathy/empathy women feel when presented with such images. It's not only abnormalities in babies, it's suffering of all kinds. I find it very painful, for instance, to view images of the atrocities happening in Iran, so while I feel I need to look at them to be informed, I scan them quickly, whereas I lingered over the photos of the Iranian people the day they so joyously voted.

[peithecelt]

*laughs* I am amazed that everyone commenting (wonder what the gender split is) has the same response I did, and am amazed that the doctors running the study never asked a woman why she would respond that way.

This is not about who you put your energy into, rather it's about the fact that it hurts to see a child deformed.. If you ARE a parent, you feel a combination of guilt ("Why was I blessed with a healthy child and this person wasn't."), sympathy ("that poor child, and their poor parents, how hard is their life going to be?") and fear ("What if my next child isn't healthy.")... If you're not, it's sympathy and fear. This has nothing to do with who you put the energy into but simply the response of a mother (actual or potential) to someone who she can't help and which triggers a desire to hide from the fear and pain associated with seeing a child suffer and not being able to do anything to help.

**appropriate caveats regarding the stereotyping of maternal instinct, and the recognition that not every woman wants to be a mother, here**

[cinemaven]

This is a perfect example of why the results of studies should always be taken with a grain of salt.
As I read the study, I formed a conclusion of why women asked for the pictures of children with deformities faster than men and was shocked when I read the extrapolations of those conducting the study.

To say that the study raises more questions than it answers, or to decide that women wanting to look at babies with obvious deformities less than men somehow relates to child abandonment is troubling. Women live a portion of their lives with the fear that they'll have a child with problems. To me, it's an empathic reaction to the pictures... those babies with deformities made them feel. Why didn't the scientists wonder why the pictures didn't bother the men? Maybe it's because men are shut off to their emotions and the fact that they can cheerfully look at deformed babies is the reason that so many are able to run away from marriages with children (in gigantically greater numbers than a woman dismisses her child)

My extrapolation is just as groundless as that of the researchers.
This was a very good reminder that studies are always biased based on the beliefs of those who advance the data.

[weatherwaxx]

"This doesn't fit with common sense. It raises a question."

Dr. Stephen Grant, why the deviI didn't you just ASK women why they don't like to look at deformed babies?

Every woman has fears about her baby--will it be healthy, will it grow and thrive, will it survive?

A deformed baby punches all those buttons.

IT HURTS, Doctor. That's why women don't like to look at deformed babies.

Jeez, I don't like to make blanket statements about men because they're not all insensitive dolts, but Dr. Grant really wins the brain-freeze award on this one.

[brainpower]

I think it is most important that the woman did not rate the babies any lower than the men did. Maybe it is as simple as the fact that many women can be more sensitive to the potential discomfort a person could experience from being stared at, and even though they were only pictures, the instinct to protect is deeply ingrained. Like Mom said, "It's not nice to stare".

[FallbackKayBee]

Interesting that most everyone seems to assume women would not care for an actual baby born with abnormalities, and that we have evolved to "invest all the resources into healthy-looking kids."

Here's a simpler explanation: Imaging that your baby is born unhealthy or disabled is so distressing for women that they can't bear to think about it. If you showed them pictures of perfect-looking babies getting sick or injured (shudder) they would click away just as fast. It's BECAUSE of our maternal instinct not in spite of it!

And that, Dr. Grant, is how it all fits in perfectly with common sense!

[weatherwaxx]

Yes. Exactly.

[tm68]

I think this goes back to something instinctive- very Darwinian. When we weren't so "evolved", it was a matter of survival of the fittest. Abnormal looking babies would've been deemed weak, not fit for survival and the women who bore the babies and are responsible for giving it life would abandon it.

[weatherwaxx]

Not necessarily. But the odds are that a deformed baby would not survive, no matter how hard the mother tried to keep it alive. A cleft-palate baby can't nurse. A baby who can't nurse, and isn't in a hospital, is going to starve to death.

[LaurieAnn]

Having a very awkward special needs child myself I wonder if there isn't something built into women's psyches with the knowledge of how much ostracism from the group their children will face in life if mother isn't there to protect them. Deep down perhaps a women knows that this child's chances of survival is more precarious than others and so the need to not attach to the child. I'm speaking from an evolutionary standpoint here, not about how we actually parent when we're thinking about it.