Take a man who wants to have children, show him the face of a young woman and an older woman and ask him which one he would choose as the mother of his children: what answer do you expect him to give you? Probably not the one you imagine: contrary to what one might think based on the results of other studies on couples, according to what was discovered by new research published in PLOS Onemen and women who want to become parents judge more mature-looking faces to be more attractive than young ones – and caring skills or greater financial resources have nothing to do with it.
Older is better. The authors recruited 149 heterosexual men and 151 heterosexual women in their thirties and without children, and asked them to rate the attractiveness of 50 faces of the opposite sex aged between 19 and 55.
Contrary to expectations (participants – especially men – said they preferred younger faces), both men and women who reported a greater desire to have children instead judged the faces of older people to be more attractive.
Money and parenting have nothing to do with it. To understand the reasons for this unexpected choice, the authors therefore carried out a second and third study, asking some of the participants to evaluate the same 50 faces analyzed previously, indicating how much those people could seem like potential “good parents” and how rich they appeared. The results showed that wealth and parenthood were not linked to the preference for more mature faces.
The authors conclude by stating that, although the link between the desire to have children and the preference for younger or younger faces remains partly unclear, the results show that there is no clear evidence to support the still widespread belief that men tend to choose younger partners.
