How can good looking children have not particularly good looking parents?

[smyshna]

Genuine question, just curious if anyone else has noticed this.

DH is very conventionally attractive. His two sisters are also very pretty and both modelled when they were younger. DH has been scouted too but wasn’t interested.

His parents are lovely people, but neither is what you’d call conventionally attractive. Even looking at photos of them when they were younger, you wouldn’t say either was particularly good looking.

I know genetics is a lottery but it seems quite remarkable that all three children turned out good looking. They’re all genetically related. Has anyone else come across this?

At 50? People do age. Youth is attractive so at twenty it’s a lot easier to be good looking.

"Well quite. Look at the Queen and Prince Phil. Two notably good looking people "

What? Philip was good looking in his youth, but she never was. Plus there's so much inbreeding in that family...

Why do good looking people have not so good looking kids? Its a mystery.

Ask my kids 😂

There is less care with some young people these days. I remember going to Bristol as a child and seeing a lot of well dress beautiful women.
Nowadays it is more baggy tracksuits.
There is also a lot of gym bunnies, love island types who really take care of themselves, they wear tight gym wear, no alcohol or fast food.

Yes. Lily Rose Depp is another example. Both of her parents were very good looking, and you can see that she’s inherited features from both of them, but they just don’t mix well.

That's a different matter though. The thread is about attractive faces and bodies, I presume, rather than how people dress.

Regression to the mean? A particularly attractive couple tend to have less attractive offspring - and vice versa. A kind of stabilising situation.

A lot of attractiveness when young is simply because one is young. Actual beauty which is far rarer dims but it’s still there as you age.

I grew up very close to my cousins. My mother and brother and respective partners are pleasant and conventional looking. My 3 cousins were beauties. They had the look of their parents but much more attractive. Like a perfect genetic fusion, yet they looked nothing alike each other. The boy's looks changed a lot as his jawline changed especially once he hit 40s but he was absolutely beautiful as a teen. Quite like Leonardo Di Caprio in Romeo and Juliet, and aged similarly. His sisters were and still are stunning. When dh met them he said he had never seen such beauty in the flesh before. Honestly it was hard growing up around them. Needless to say all found good looking partners, and produced nice looking children but the middle generation stood out as an anomaly.

Anyone think that they’re really attractive and their kid is really ugly?

I agree re Demi and Bruce. Not one of their daughters inherited her beauty.

I think it’s 50/50. I’m conventionally what is called good looking, my husband extremely so. Our kids are objectively very attractive. My best friend is drop dead gorgeous. Stunning. Her husband is plain. She has one head-turningly beautiful daughter and one that’s very plain.

Lifestyle. My partner looks much better than his siblings. Especially one if them. They all look like their parents but they aged differently. I think it is harder to make these judgements about adults because lifestyle and stress plays a role.

that said I have seen some very beautiful young kids with I am sorry to say - ugly parents!

It’s a lottery. My 18 yo dd is definitely above average looks and well groomed, which helps. Not a supermodel, but described by others as beautiful. Far more attractive than dh or I ever were. She’s definitely his btw. She was ivf.

When I was at school, there were a pair of twin teen girls. One was beautiful and outgoing. The other was 2 or 3 inches shorter, a little overweight and wasn’t interested in clothes or grooming and was not terribly attractive. They looked so alike and their mannerisms so similar that I did wonder if they were identical and something changed in the womb.

Nutrition can influence height, but genetics plays a much bigger role. I grew up upper-middle-class and I'm 5'3" while my younger sister is 5'10". My dad's side of the family is short and my mom's side is tall. Same parents, same upbringing, wildly different heights, almost as though we inherited different combinations of genes rather than our parents' income determining how tall we'd be. Funny how genetics works, isn't it?

I think she’s attractive just not Johnny Depp level

I think she’s attractive just not Johnny Depp level

My teen DS is good looking, not like head turning beautiful but handsome and everyone says so. It's actually a bit embarrassing sometimes because if he introduces me to someone they ask if he looks like his dad, guessing I must have a gorgeous husband (I wish!) because it didnt come from me. Im pleasant looking, not a beauty. I was adopted and have no genetic history so I'm guessing there was a good gene there somewhere.

Simply "GENETICS".

These people don’t exist on MNs, their dc are all stunning & tall!

Keep in mind that many beautiful children grow up to be not so pretty adults.
I was not good looking as a child, there was girls who were very pretty. When you see them now it’s a bit of a shock. Mid 40’s.
I definitely look better than a lot of them.

Yes weird post

No one would ever admit this!

That's what I mean: everyone can look at the same face and see something completely different.

I definitely see Brad's face shape in Shiloh, and I guess together with the colouring that has me seeing him above all else!

Shiloh has her mum's lips though.

Absolutely! I always marvel at the offspring of my very lovely but fairly middling looking friend & her husband who was hit hard with the ugly stick who have 3 stunning daughters. She has even mentioned it herself that she doesn’t know where they get it from.