Whom are newborn babies said to resemble?

In my last post, I suggested that babies may be born looking more like the father than the mother, although the experimental evidence is so far inconclusive. There is a related finding that is much less controversial and well replicated, however, and that is the question of whom newborn babies are said to resemble.

Nature may or may not help assure fathers of their paternity by making babies resemble them, but friends and family -- in particular, mothers and their kin -- certainly do. In three separate studies conducted in three different North American countries (Canada, Mexico, and the United States) in three different decades, mothers and maternal relatives are far more likely to allege the baby’s paternal resemblance than its maternal resemblance. Mothers and maternal kin of the baby spontaneously say things like “Oh, the baby has Daddy’s eyes!” or “she looks so much like Daddy!” This happens even when the newborn babies in fact do not resemble their fathers. Such allegation of paternal resemblance assure the fathers of their paternity, whether the babies actually resemble them or not.