By Melissa Grant
OPINION
Melissa Grant
“Gee, your daughter looks just like her dad – you didn’t get a look in did you?”
“Wow look at her. She is his mini-me!” As you can probably guess, my daughter looks a lot like my husband. Some would even say the only real differences between them are their genders and the fact they were born decades apart.
For the record, I think she has my lips, nose and ears – although many would disagree.
Actually, I’ve heard the above comments so many times that I started to think that maybe I wasn’t there when my dear daughter, Emmy, was conceived.
But I was at the birth, oh wait…
Anyway, turns out many other mothers “didn’t get a look in” either.
Many mum friends say their kids looked a lot like their hubby during their younger years.
Maybe it has something to do with evolution. There’s actually an evolutionary theory that babies look more like dad because while a mother can be certain a child is theirs, regardless of looks, a father cannot.
The paternal resemblance theory was backed up by a scientific study in 1995. In that study, people were shown pictures of offspring and asked to rate the resemblance between them and their possible mothers and fathers.
While photos of one-year-olds couldn’t be matched to the mothers, they were much more likely to be matched to photos of their dad. However, photos of offspring at age 10 and 20 were found to be no more similar to their actual mums and dads than random parents.
So maybe my daughter will look less like dad as she gets older. Maybe she won’t.
But it doesn’t really matter. It’s much more important who a child is, rather than who they look like.
At 18 months, my daughter is already showing some of my personality traits, including being organisational (she loves lining up toys and utensils). She’s also super inquisitive and social (both my husband and I are journalists so no surprises there).
However, my mother thinks my daughter’s personality is just like my brother’s was when he was a toddler.
Like her uncle at 18 months, she has a ridiculous amount of energy and “shovels in” the food at meal times.
As you watch your firstborn grow, you begin to wonder what any future sisters or brothers will be like. Will they look alike?
We have friends whose son and daughter, born two years apart, look strikingly similar.
But we also have friends who have twin girls, with one resembling mum and the other looking much like dad.
However, the bottom line is that regardless of looks and personality, a child is always their parents’ special little creation.
