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...

A friend of mine is stunning, could have been a model when we were younger. Also incredibly clever. Earns a fortune, and happily married. And a lovely kind person, hugely popular, but not arrogant, and treats everyone equally. Just an all-round great person, who on the surface would appear to have everything.

But her Mum was a young single parent, couldn’t cope, and my friend was fostered for years as a young child. My friend never wanted kids, due, I think, to her unstable childhood. She is full of anxieties which she conceals from most people.

Nothing is how it seems OP.

Yeah, curse of being a red head lol.

Honestly it was the exact opposite at my school. The cool, popular kids grew up to have the least interesting lives, while the plain/overweight/geeky ones are doing very well indeed.

To take one example, a girl who was bullied for being fat is now a consultant surgeon and looks stunning (she lost the weight, and has acquired ‘polish’) and the girl who used to bully her quite honestly looks about 10-15 years older than she is, from smoking, drugs and a life of relative deprivation.

I have four degrees. So do vast numbers of the parents doing drop offs at DS's primary school, because it's near a university and two hospitals, and lots of us are academics/medics etc. Bar one woman (who is an architect) who has a wonderful and eternally neat Louise Brooks bob, I would say the rest of us look perfectly ordinary/permanently slightly bedraggled, as we are mostly on foot or on bikes, damp, and dressed in outdoor clothing and/or cycle helmets over scrubs or work clothes. As do our children.

DH is clever. We have a clever (but lazy) child. Both DH and I are from impoverished WC backgrounds, and are the first in our families to finish school, far less go to university. All of our parents left school at 12/13, and worked in manual, MW jobs all their lives. DH' school was reasonable, but mine was notorious for its truancy, fighting and pregnancies. Lots of my classmates have spent time in prison, and some died young. I feel very lucky I was stubborn enough to manage to get out, with no support or encouragement. We now present as MC, and work in professional jobs, live in a crumbling Victorian pile in an 'old money' part of the city, but we're not.

What I'm trying to say is that people are more various than you're suggesting. I'm certainly clever and high-achieving, but unpolished and not particularly pretty in appearance. I'm not sure I read as being anything in particular.

Hmm, not sure if there really is a correlation.

But I do know that conventionally attractive people generally go out with fellow conventionally attractive people and go on to marry/not marry and have conventionally attractive children? How it links with intelligence, I'm not so sure but I often find that what is considered 'conventionally attractive' is in line with beauty standards of the more affluent people, their affluent fashion sense/style/look is 'aspirational'. And affluent people are more likely to have had access to better quality education, leading to higher paid jobs, leading to ability to be groomed and well dressed etc and in turn their children follow?

So, in conclusion, it's do to with money.

I’m not sure that brains and beauty is necessarily linked (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t), but it’s fair to say that these attractive European women would likely have chosen to breed with attractive European men, which means their offspring are already set up with good genes. Add to this their culture/the way they are brought up (learning languages etc) and it’s no surprise the way their children turn out.

I think the link is effort (and to a lesser extent money). A lot of good looking people aren’t actually very different from the rest- the difference is grooming, healthy eating, exercise and taking an interest in how you look.

Likewise for the vast majority, academic success is also down to effort. You get a few outliers who succeed without effort or fail even with effort, but most of us are somewhere in the middle and how well we do relates to how hard we work.

People who make an effort and have high standards in one area find it easier to make an effort and have high standards in others.

Would also add that there’s a lot of negativity in your post, op, and a lot of projecting your own insecurities onto your daughter- “her hair is all over the place due to her inheriting curly hair from me”, “messy kid with the messy mum” etc etc.

Its money you are noticing. And money via tutoring etc helps average kids get to higher academic achievement.
Really intelligent kids though do not fit into this mould, but are also often not recognised in primary school. One of my relatives was an unattractive quiet boy with a stammer. It wasn't until later high school his very high IQ was recognised and he is a leader in his maths related field.

Genetics places less role in intelligence than most people seem to think.

Also, to add to what I said earlier, attractive people also have 'attractive privilege' which comes from how others, unconsciously, treat them. The 'pretty' kids will get noticed more and given lead roles in school plays etc, other children want to be like them, they are popular etc. They will get that extra leg up in life for being attractive. This, in turn, will give them a confidence as they grow.

And try being a fat messy kid of a slim attractive mum.

Yes, exactly. Just because someone is physically beautiful it doesn't automatically mean they're therefore stupid. The universe doesn't work that way, much as some people would love it to. What we think of as beauty is really just facial symmetry, and it's rare which is why we value and admire it. My Aunt was a model in her youth and has just turned 80. Her features are still symmetrical, her skin is good, and her figure and posture is still excellent. She's far more conventionally beautiful than your averagely plain 30 year old.

She also happens to be bi-lingual, great fun and a really good pianist. Yes, life is often very unfair [shrugs].

Hmm the the smartest people I remember from school or university were not especially good looking and a few were anything but. There was a girl at our school who was like a kind of maths and science prodigy who went to university at 16 which was the youngest they would admit her, she is now a Dr of physics and does all kinds of ground breaking research but seriously all her gifts were intellectual and not physical and she was not charming or polished at all.

I was at uni with a guy who is now a leading researcher in AI and again not very good looking and at the time a bit of a Debbie downer, although he's perked up these days.

I do remember there being a group of kids from quite an affluent area at my high school who were as the OP describes nicely turned out, confident had money for things like music, dance and drama lessons, horse riding and so on. They were all decent academically, got the leads in the school plays, were made head girl and boy that sort of thing but they were not ever the most gifted pupils but they did have a kind of all-round gloss that the teachers liked to push to the fore to represent the school. I think that even in an average pupil confidence, social graces, and looking right can boost how teachers and others see a child and even how they rate their abilities.

I don't see a huge correlation between beauty and brains, either in my kids' cohorts or (back in the day) in mine.

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

No. I’m NT, DH is ND, Dd is ND. Our home is not messy or chaotic, I could never live like this. And as for therapy for SEN? In which world? You’ve got to fight for every single thing.

Imagine ‘peaking’ at primary school??! Shudder…

I am tall, and slim. I was regularly referred to as ‘golf club’, or ‘concord nose’, whilst all the pretty girls would slink on by, heralded by a chorus of whistles… I felt what you might imagine your daughter may feel.

but the invisible blessing here is that your child gets to enjoy her childhood just that smidge longer than her peers, who may (at worst) become exposed to adult ‘sexualisation’, and / or (perhaps even worse) begin to recognise the societal expectations that they are required to be decorative above all else… It is these little girls that you really ought to worry for.

Your DD will do her thing. She’ll learn ‘stuff’. She’ll develop and perfect her personality without judgement or prejudice. And she’ll mature into the queen that she was destined to be without scrutiny or criticism - the lucky little bean!!

This is total bullshit. Maybe this is YOUR experience but that doesn’t mean it is generally.

I am trying to make sure my kids are brought up better than I was, therefore more ‘put together’ intelligent, supported. The last thing I want is to be told my kids are just ‘mini me’s’ In the making. No. They’re better than that.

One of my children is incredibly clever and beautiful but she works bloody hard to get the top grades that she does.

Pardon me for saying but this is a ridiculous worry and post. I have scatty hair, I guess not bad looking (no model but not a gremlin either! 😄)but I'm also very intelligent, have a really good job as does my wife and our eldest daughter (aged 5) has slightly disheveled looking red hair but is a beautiful, if skinny thing due to food aversions from autism but she is also incredibly intelligent, polite and a joy. You see what you want to see in the world. There's no need to categorise and judging children. "Well put together"??? What does that even mean and why on earth are you passing judgement. I hope you don't pass this judgements onto your daughter.

Some people need to get some perspective on life and realise that life is wonderful,no matter how you look and it's what you make it. It's certainly far too short to be worrying and passing comment like this

I think I felt this as a child. But there were also pretty children that weren’t so clever. I don’t think brains and beauty have a direct correlation but I think you are right in that most children, especially at a young age, reflect their parents - I would say that has more to do with upbringing and whatever their standards are (or are not).

I think we are in an age where individualism is far more celebrated than “beauty and brains” and having a standard look. At least where I am. It’s really about personality and character and that always shines through no matter what you look like.

The popular kids at my secondary school were all top sets and attractive too… most had well off parents. These people are now those parents you talk of with attractive well groomed children in primary school… the circle of life.

" Add being confident because you know your parents are reliable, dependable people, not likely to pick you up drunk or take you to the pub until 8pm on a school night!"

I think you're being too black and white in your thinking. It's entirely possible that the kids from the 'nice, polished' families you describe are out late on a school night especially with 'gentle parenting' in fashion.

My friend is always immaculate looking. Hair and lashes done, posh clothes etc but her reception child is out at softplay after school and then up until 10pm on a school night.

I also don't understand your labelling of children. Looks / wealth aren't everything.

My MIL had next to no money but raised 4 well behaved boys with good manners and kindness. Would u have 'matched them up in the playground' based on your current way of thinking? No.

Just for fun:
Ariana Grande, Halle Berry, Jodie Comer, Kate Moss, Beyoncé.

I mean, they just look like kids 😊

I think the parents values permeate. So the polished mothers tend to have polished daughters as they have taught them to value this; the educated parents have educated kids for the same reason etc