Doesn't it feel terribly unfair sometimes that..

[DrowninginMaryBeardsBeard]

The kids in primary school who tend to be the clever ones also, unfairly, seem to be attractive and popular too.
Not sure if its just my kids school. Obviously my kid is beyond beautiful to me. But she's not as well put together as these girls, her hair is all over the place due to her inheriting curly hair from me, she's too skinny due to food aversion.
Then there's a group of girls who are just beautiful, they always have neat work, speak several languages, get the best parts in the school play, they look... cool... even at nine. Mums are equally stylish usually European women.
Why is this? Attractive well educated women have attractive clever children. Scatty, hairy mares like me born without beauty and brains have to run around like headless chickens, work more hours for less pay so have less time for taking our kids to the hairdressers and spending hours teaching them Spanish, doing long division or reading the classics?
It's like if you see the line of kids you could almost match them up with the parents without knowing. Slightly overweight child with the overweight parents, messy kid with the messy mum (that's me!), hippie child with the hippie parents, sleek ponytailed outdoorsy child with horse riding mum. I mean this isn't exactly rocket science. But the link between attractiveness, academic ability, class and 'polish' .... that I find fascinating.
Is there also a link with neurodiversity?
For what it's worth my primary school was not middle class at all, kids with parents in prison or addicts who had left them with grandparents to raise, and this was not the case. We were all the same class and so that wasn't a factor. It was more who was 'pretty' and that was only decided by who the boys wanted to kiss, so not a true representation of beauty. I remember there being a sort of 'blonde privilege' where blondeness was a marker of beauty which brunette would never beat, regardless of facial symmetry. That would never fly now and would be rightly challenged in DD's very diverse school.
And these ramblings are why I'm exhausted every day...

This isn't evident at all at my DC's school, I wonder if it's more prominent depending on the area? We are in the 'burbs and there is a real mix of people and families, from parents who are solicitors and corporates, to self-employed tradesmen or skilled workers, to perpetually unemployed, screaming at your kids in public, drinking cider from a can round the corner just before pick-up...and lots in between.

The kids all just look like kids to me. I couldn't identify whether they're the bright ones or otherwise by looking at them.

The people and things you mention in your OP all sound like the privileges that stem from having money and a SAHP, really.

Being the brightest and/or cleverest at 9 isn't really any guarantee of how the rest of someone's life will pan out though. I don't know if it's even beneficial, really.

Absolutely agree with the neurodiversity issue. Two successful, neurotypical parents are more likely to produce neurotypical kids. These grow up in a healthy, clean environment where chores are (mostly) always done, the home tidy and also observe their parents having a vibrant social life. That in itself is a huge privilege. Neurodiverse kids are more likely to have neurodiverse parents, living in a slightly chaotic and messy home and whose mothers might be overwhelmed by the needs of multiple kids especially if they require extra appointments or therapy for SEN.

It's like living life on hard or easy mode. The neurotypical parents I know never really struggled getting their kids to meet milestones. They were sent off to nursery aged 1-2 and stayed there without any problems or behavioural issues. This frees up enough time for the mum to focus on herself or taking care of younger siblings. Both obviously earn enough to pay for nursery or nannies. Neurotypical kids don't have any sensory issues regarding food so it was a breeze weaning them and they tend to eat healthier. It's easier to get them away from screens. That has another knock-on beneficial effect on health, immunity, appearance and overall well being.

Over the years, these kids tend to be more popular for the same reasons. They are used to being social, charming and interacting with others which they learned easily from their parents. Their parents are also more likely to be proactive and social towards teachers and other parents. In my school, I noticed a strong correlation between the popular kids whose parents all knew each other outside of school, and often the teachers as well, versus kids on the fringes whose parents only showed up to drop off and pick up.

You know you want to name the city....

If it helps OP my 10yo DD is supermodel beautiful, I have been getting comments from strangers since she was a baby - she is absolutely gorgeous, and very popular at school….But she struggles so much. I’m going in for a meeting on what more can be done, she already gets extra support and I have a horrible feeling they may want to hold her back

I don't really know what you mean. I have 4 children at school and each are their own person.

My eldest DD was very neat and was desperate to be popular. She was confident and did every club going. I think her 'try hardness' perhaps put people off.

However my second DD was very popular, athletic, academic but was out spoken and really didn't give a shit.

The third DD always tries her very best and goes out of her way to be friendly. She has lots of friends and is messy.

My boy is fun, popular and just ok at learning. Doesn't give a damn.

None of them are not really like me or dh. Each is individual. We have always encouraged them to be themselves.

My DD is beautiful, always told by others, a lady stopped me in the petrol station forecourt once to tell me how beautiful she was. She is very clever too. She also suffers from low self esteem and low confidence, she wasn’t the kid who got the best parts in plays, they tend to go to the confident kids

Slightly overweight child with the overweight parents, messy kid with the messy mum (that's me!), hippie child with the hippie parents, sleek ponytailed outdoorsy child with horse riding mum.

This makes sense though, invariably these things are nurture over nature.

The overweight child with overweight parents will share their diet and activity levels more likely than not; the messy parent won't invest as much time and effort in polishing their child's appearance if it isn't a priority to themselves and/or they don't know how to- no hair is truly unmanageable if you have the time and money which lots don't; the hippie child will be influenced by their parents attitudes and they'll buy clothes they also like; outdoorsy child will no doubt be exposed to their parents outdoorsy hobbies.

There are of course many factors that influence and have an affect, but I don't think it's shocking. I can't say I've paid enough attention to notice the attractiveness thing, but honestly have well maintained hair, skin and clothes etc makes a huge difference to someone's attractiveness- it's not all genetics. Speaking about adults now, but there are few people who if they were a healthy weight, invested time and money into doing their nails, eyebrows, looking after their hair and skin, knowing what style suits them and being good at make up would be ugly still.

@YorkshirePuddingBelongs I feel your pain. I hope the school listen to you. Has she been seen by an educational psychologist?

My kids were the most beautiful and clever at school according to me. I would not even check anybody else kids to compare ever. The mother of a very geeky looking girl once said to me. You know the popular group of girls are so and so and bullied other kids. It was news to me they were popular and I was thinking to myself you must be joking. 🤣 As it happened in year 6 I learned of some mothers who were making my DD lives difficult purely because they were jealous and insecure. I felt disgusted that grown up women could do that to a child. Now many years later those daughters are very unpopular and have not friends according to gossip going around. I blamed on the mothers as they projected their insecurities to their children. Hopefully you are wiser and are not doing that. It really affects their confidence.

Two nice neat French plaits with the 'paintbrush' ends for easy chewing?

I know your post isn't about hairstyles 😂 but I'm a teacher of children with ASD, maybe you could replace the hair with other sensory toys? Xx

I think that expectations put on to children plays a massive part. Parents are into how they look, being physically active, eating well, history buffs or maths genius’s. They will encourage their children to be into these things.
Parents with a high sense of achievement will encourage their children to become high achieving.

My parents were arty, chaotic and disorganised. They didn’t encourage academic or physical activities because they weren’t on their radar. If I had been really into science or horse riding they wouldn’t have understood it or encouraged me. It wasn’t their thing, we weren’t ‘those people’. Absolutely no interest in how they looked and thought that not drinking one night a week was the key to good health. I was like that as a child (not the alcohol obviously) but as an adult discovered that I was actually quite good at subjects other than art, that I need organisation and calm and that I like to make an effort (for me) and to look nice.

Anyone I've come across who is v attractive, tall, slim, nice voice, etc has also been boring with little sense of humour. Made me wonder if you float through life being admired you don't have to try very hard and hence no funny wit.

My daughter is autistic and I can confirm: doing two plaits are a total lifesaver and the only hairstyle she will tolerate! Looks relatively tidy, keeps it out of her face and lasts the whole day.

I’m not good enough at hair to do French braids (and she won’t sit long enough), but simple ones are fine, and she can still play with them (I’m gradually weaning her off chomping on the ends).

She HATES me brushing her hair but it gets too tangled not to - the braids now stay in overnight to minimise knots. I can then re-do them in the morning one side at a time and it’s just all so much easier - for some reason she will tolerate me brushing one half of her hair at a time, but not her whole head!

@LickleLamb Your perception has little connection to reality, but if it makes you feel better, go with it. It's not going to harm anyone else.

Lickle I felt that watching a “who do you think you are” program with an absolutely beautiful sexy singer. But my god you could see there was no spark there at all - the sort your heart sinks when you are put next to them in a restaurant.

@TheaBrandt was it Leona Lewis?

This is almost certainly true. But then they start to marry within too restricted a circle, and all sorts of problems emerge. Just look at Victoria’s grandchildren, more interbreeding there than at Crufts, and to no good effect. ( see also : Plantagenets and French royalty). Actually, genetics as I hazily understand them seems to indicate that there is a tendency to return to the mean, so the offspring are not necessarily ‘better’ than the two parents. A lot of ‘breeding’ of animals bears this out ( although people try desperately to ignore this as £££)

Probably a good thing that the current POW had a mother from the aristocracy rather than royalty, and has found a middle class wife !

Looks alone get you so far. You’ve ultimately got to walk the walk. Looks won’t pass you an exam, or mean you can do your job to a high standard. In my job, the clients don’t give a shit what you look like, so long as you’re presentable and professional. All they care about is getting the job done to a decent standard.

I understand the syndrome….

But there’s an important difference between natural intelligence and natural beauty and the sort of competence and polish which is often bred by affluent, high achieving and confident parents.

Are children from solid middle class backgrounds with parents who know how to burnish their confidence, which books to buy for them, which subjects to buy tutoring in and how to dress them intrinsically more beautiful and intelligent or do they know how to play the game?

There’s probably some genetic natural selection at play; beautiful and intelligent people usually have a greater pool of potential mates open to them than those with less of these traits but a large amount of this is down to people knowing how to make society work for them.

I seems like I'm in the minority but it always kind of baffles me that people notice this sort of stuff? I know the names of some of the kids in my son's class but couldn't pick them out of a line up unless they're his particular friends.

Is this more noticeable with girls than boys?

I will say that I'm an overweight, either completely put together (as come from work) or scruffy AF (as come from WFH so lucky so joggers, jumper and hair scragged up) whereas my children are always very well turned out and are not overweight at all. Two of them have additional needs, one is consistently top of his class in everything.

Something I noticed when Friends Reunited first started, before it got taken over by SM polish, was how much time averages everything out.

The beautiful/clever people I had been at school with were in their 40s just the same as me (plain/average intelligence). On the whole, they had done okay but ultimately nothing special.

At school they had seemed so amazing but in the end time has averaged it out.

Are you suggesting that the State education system unquestionably offers every single child the opportunity to achieve their maximum academic potential and doesn't in any way fail children to any degree whatsoever?

IIRC there are measurable statistical correlations between some or all of: attractiveness, IQ, academic success, popularity, height, salary, health, longevity… But they're probably only really measurable on a big statistical population level, so I wouldn't expect any one person's experiences, or any particular school class, to reflect that.

Having said that, I knew an older boy when I was a kid, a family friend, who was academically stellar, tall, good-looking as far as I could tell, a grade 8 clarinettist, popular, and also the nicest person imaginable, the utter bastard 🤣 I think he's a doctor now.

As others have said, it’s often not the most academic that are the most successful after education. It is often the more confident, and those with other skills that aren’t valued at school like persuasion, entrepreneurship and leadership skills that end up doing the “best”.

We all want our DC to be happy. That might mean SAHM or sparkling international well paid career or making a difference to the world. As pp have said, the people that I know that fall into one of those categories and are really happy are not spectacular looking!

(Just to add I did extremely well at school, was always well turned out but also had 'unruly curls'. I also wasn't especially pretty)