Is it normal for newborns to be ugly?

"If the baby is cute, you can just tell them the baby is cute, but if the baby is ugly..." Miki explains in the viral video. Did someone say this to you when your bub was born?

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Babies generally aren't the nicest-looking shortly after birth. They're all swollen and squished, and if they've travelled down the birth canal they'll most likely have a cone head (albeit temporarily). But we love them just the same, and they often grow into their cuteness... in time.

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"He looks so much like you!"

Nurse, Miki Rai, from America's Pacific Northwest, shared a video on TikTok explaining what to say to new parents when their baby is ugly.

The short clip starts as a stitch with Aussie mum-of-four, Aimee, holding her newborn baby up for the camera, saying the comment "He looks like much like you" makes her giggle.

"My preceptor at nursing and delivery school actually taught me this," says Miki in the clip that has been viewed more than 650,000 times.

"If the baby is cute, you can just tell them the baby is cute.

"But if the baby is ugly, then you just tell them it looks just like the..."

Miki later added in the comments that the point of her video was to tell the story of what her educator told her when she was in training to be a nurse, not what she actually says.

"And this baby is cute regardless," she added for clarification.

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"You don't need to lie..."

People saw the humour in Miki's TikTok and shared how they react when they meet a baby looking like a... well... baby - all squished up and swollen.

"I just say 'awww, oh my goodness'," commented one person.

Another added, "If someone ever tells me by future baby looks just like me now I know."

"My preceptor said, 'They are too sweet!'," chimed in a third.

One person joked their cousin had a baby last week who "looks just like her husband."

"My mum pushed me out after 16 hours of active labour and the first thing my dad said was 'wow the baby looks like an alien'," reported another TikToker.

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And this mum insisted on absolute honesty with her own midwife: "I once told a nurse, 'You don't need to lie... he's scary-looking now, but he will chub up and look like a normal baby'."

It turns out that adults find the faces of babies most appealing at around the six-month mark, says new research from Brock University.

“We want to let parents know that if they’re not instantly grabbed by this baby as much as they thought they might be, then that’s normal. The bonding will build and grow over time,” says Tony Volk, Child and Youth Studies Associate Professor.

In their study, Volk, graduate student Prarthana Franklin and undergraduate student Irisa Wong showed 142 research participants photos of 18 babies taken shortly after birth, at three months old and at six months old.

The researchers asked participants how willing they would be to adopt the babies based on their perceptions of the children’s cuteness, happiness, health and self-resemblance.

“We noticed adults rated the newborns as the least attractive and the six month olds had the highest ratings across all of the facial cues,” says Franklin, the lead author of the study titled “Are Newborns’ Faces Less Appealing?”

“That was interesting because usually we think that the younger children are, the cuter they are and so more people prefer younger children,” she says, adding that their study showed “a lower limit of three months old that’s the preferred age compared to newborns.”

Babies, whether they be human or animal, possess certain physical traits that adults consider to be “cute.” In human babies, these could include big eyes, chubby cheeks, broad smiles and cooing noises.

In the 1940s, ethologist Konrad Lorenz coined the term “kinderschema,” or “child schema,” to describe these traits. He theorized that babies’ cuteness brings out adults’ nurturing and caretaking behaviour, which, in turn, ensures infant survival.

If this is the case, newborn babies should be seen as being the cutest of all, as they’re the most vulnerable and they need the most protection and care, says Volk.

Initially, he and his research team were puzzled by their finding that adults’ perception of cuteness intensifies six months or so after the babies are born.

“We wondered, why would there be this specific peak?” says Volk. “But then, we read the medical literature, which was almost universal in that six month olds are better at surviving illnesses than younger babies.”

Other studies and reports worldwide shows that most infanticide or abandonment occurs within the first few weeks of an infant’s life.

Volk says the delay in cuteness perception is an adult-driven adaptation that may be a leftover from evolutionary times when resources were scarce and infant diseases were deadly.

“Hunter-gatherers who already had a child they were nursing, couldn’t nurse two children at once,” says Volk. “If you’re a peasant mother in medieval England and you only have enough food for one child, and if having two means they’re both likely to die, it’s best just to have one child.

“These are difficult decisions that humans have made for thousands of years,” says Volk. “A delay in attachment makes those early losses easier to cope with.”

Volk identifies two other possible factors for the delay in baby-parent bonding.

He says it can take up to a month for babies to develop the ability to consciously smile at someone out of happiness, which adults often find endearing.

Also, research that Volk conducted a decade ago found that fathers who were actively involved with their babies tended to notice that their months-old offspring looked like them, which increased the fathers’ bonding.

It turns out babies may also take their time bonding. Previous research shows babies develop a preference for a specific caregiver and experience “separation anxiety” when away from that person at around the seven-month mark.

The Brock research team urges parents and society to come up with ways of bonding with newborns.

“We firmly recognize that every newborn infant offers the tremendously appealing, unlimited potential that all humans initially possess, and we fully encourage investing in all newborns as much love and resources as is possible,” says the paper.

Ways to bring about earlier bonding include infant massage, spending lots of time with the baby, skin-to-skin contact and supporting new parents materially and psychologically as much as possible.

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