Women tend to look for husbands who resemble their dads, according to some researchers in Hungary. That's pretty much conventional wisdom, and not particularly surprising. The reason I point out the article is because there are two strange assertions that are unsupported, and strike me as false.
Husbands and wives have long been suggested to look alike and this is known to occur in many animal species. Couples that look like each other are also more likely to share common genes, and having a degree of similarity is believed to beneficial. ...First cousins are generally too closely related to intermarry without a significant chance of accumulated genetic defects. Single instances of first-cousin marriage in a family will likely be just fine, but if the practice is carried on over generations the line will be severely weakened. There is a lot of evidence to support the notion that mating between widely different genomes leads to more robust children."One good possibility is that there are some fortuitous genetic combinations which are retained in the offspring if both parents are similar," he says. "In humans there is evidence to show a lower rate of miscarriage."
However, he points out that there is a balance between the benefits of marrying someone genetically close and the harmful effects of inbreeding. "There seems to be an ideal balance, maybe around the first or second cousin point."
Imprinting is a fast, instinctive form of learning, perhaps best known from the phenomenon in which newborn ducklings bond with the first object they see.Imprinting is generally considered to be a myth among humans. Ducks appear to imprint, but human babies do not. Until around 6 months of age, babies probably can't distinguish one adult from another, and most don't get fussy about who holds them until 12 months of age or older. Human children certainly do become attached to their parents, but not via "imprinting".To test whether women use imprinting to base their marital choices on the appearance of their fathers, the researchers took 26 adoptive families and examined how alike various family members looked. Using adoptive families meant inherited preferences could be ruled out. ...
The second showed a photo of the adoptive father as he would have looked when his daughter was between two and eight years of age, and the possible husbands. The third set showed the adoptive mother and the four possible husbands.
An "unexpected" finding, says Weisfeld, was that fathers who were judged by their daughters to have showed the most emotional warmth were much more likely to have son-in-laws who looked like them.This result undermines the above argument that women tend to select mates who look like their fathers because there's a benefit to marrying close genetic relatives. It's much more likely that this affinity is almost entirely environmental, and that women who had good relationships with their fathers will look for similar behaviors in their husbands.
Furthermore, doesn't it seem likely that men who have good relationships with their daughters will all share similar qualities? Isn't it likely that most women, regardless of their fathers, look for pretty much the same qualities in men? Those women with fathers who also possess those good qualities can be seen to be looking for the same things in mates, but really, that similarity is an effect of what most women want, not a cause of what any particular woman wants.
(HT: GeekPress.)
Until around 6 months of age, babies probably can't distinguish one adult from another, and most don't get fussy about who holds them until 12 months of age or older.
My wife says you are wrong on both counts.
S3: Your wife can say whatever she wants, but mothers are notoriously poor judges of their own children. Developmental psychology experiments have established those facts quite firmly.
S3: Although I don't generally like to argue over well-accepted facts, a search on Google for "attachment developmental psychology" will probably yield fruitful results. The field is, of course, not perfectly understood, but it appears that babies don't care who provides their care or attention during the first year of life. They need affection, but the sources isn't that important. They probably can't tell their mother from anyone else until 12 months or later, simply due to eye development, focus, attention, and other physiological factors.
I'll have to side with S3 on this one. I know babies can tell the difference between male and female, at the very least. I've seen many babies, both related and non-related, hungrily ogle my "rack" at feeding time.
Babies know the difference between their mom and their dad, siblings, and other adults and children; they just can't express very well that they know the difference. But they behave differently with each parent; that much is obvious to anyone who's had a baby.
You have to wonder whose interests are furthered by the viewpoint that babies don't care who services them during their first year.
WH: You undermine your own position when you mention babies not-your-own ogling your "rack".
Anyway, anecdotaes aside, the studies have been done and the evidence is pretty incontrovertible.
You may feel that it's obvious that your baby can tell the difference between you and other people, but it's all in your head. It's well known that parents, especially mothers, project a whole host of thoughts and emotions on their babies that just aren't there in the first year.
I don't know who benefits from such a viewpoint, but there have been literally hundreds of studies done, and they all point in the same direction.
There have also been studies to show that the distance you hold a baby to breast-feed it is about the distance a baby needs to focus on the person feeding him or her. It's only in the first few weeks that eye development is a problem. After that, it is a good way to bond with your baby and believe me, from that point on, the baby knows you are the food source and shows a preference for you. There were many videotapes we had to watch in Lamaze class and one had to do with voices. One of the parents (didn't matter if it was the mother or father) and a doctor would both say the baby's name over and over. Time and time again, the baby turned towrd the parents and not the doctor. I know babies are little irrational people with a an "I am the center of the universe" attitude at first but I think I have to side with S3 and WH on this one.
My significant other is a family practice medical doctor who delivers and takes care of infants. Before reading the comments I asked her about it and she said they can usually identify their parents within two months (at most). She's not subject to mother-bias as she's never had any children. Perhaps she is referring to one thing and the studies you are talking about are referring to another, but I'd need to see something more specific from your end citing 6-months/1-year. I googled the subject and came up with a pretty low signal-to-noise ratio.
This one seems obvious? Haven't you ever worked in a church nursery? I happily serve there and, with a happy smile in my heart and a happy smile on my face, take screaming children to "go play". There, children of 9 months or 6 months will fuss and cry until they are in their parent's arms no matter how you hold or don't hold them. And if they hear their parent's voice or see their parents (across the room, not close up) they will break out in gushing tears wanting to be held by their parents.
IT's just weird that you are firmly convinced of the opposite. Am I projecting these tears on the children, at the precise moment they hear or see their parents? And am I projecting that the crying stops when the parents pick them up?
I've never had an infant, I married my husband and adopted his son when the boy was 4.