Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Links Between Child-Father Resemblance and Child-Reported Paternal Investment

Abstract

Because conception occurs internally to the human female, ancestral males did not have 100% certainty of their paternity. Evolutionary theorists have proposed that males are sensitive to an offspring’s resemblance to them as a cue of paternity (Daly & Wilson, 1982), and calibrate their investment accordingly. In support of this proposal, research has shown that young adults who perceive themselves as resembling their father also report higher quality relationships with their father (Gallup et al., 2015). Further, outsiders’ ratings of the degree to which offspring resemble their fathers have been positively related to offspring’s reports of the quality of the relationship they have with their father (Prokop, Obertova, & Fedor, 2010).