According to Tina Sutton, "T-shirts with Yiddish sayings are hotter than matzo-ball soup." The year: 1993. My granddaughter, Amanda, received a pink T-shirt inscribed "Shayna Punim" (pretty face). The T-shirt SHOULD have read, "Party--my crib--2 A.M."

Do a Google search for "shayna punim" and you'll find 502 web sites. A similar search for "meeskeit" (ugly thing or person) will produce 138 web sites.

Paul Reiser ("Babyhood") wrote about a woman who walked by and stopped to admire his child. He had mixed feelings about strangers ogling his baby.

Obviously I love hearing how beautiful he is. I'm even gullible enough to believe that when they say he's the cutest baby they've ever seen, they really mean it. I maintain they have an up-to-date record of other children they've seen over the year, and running a quick tally, they calculate that he is indeed tangibly cuter than all the others.

Why the concern about beautiful children? Didn't Moses Mendelssohn say, "Each conception of beauty is a glimpse of God"?

Researchers at the University of Alberta observed how parents treated their "kinderlech" (affectionate term for children) during trips to the supermarket. What did they witness? They found that physical attractiveness made a big "untersheyd" (difference). The researchers noted if parents belted their children into the grocery cart, how often the parents' attention lapsed, and the number of times the children were allowed to engage in potentially "geferlekh" (dangerous) activities like standing up in the shopping cart. They also rated each child's physical attractiveness on a "tsehn-point" (10-point) scale.

The researchers have made a startling assertion: "di tate-mame" take "beser" (better) care of "sheyn" children than they do "meeskite" children. "Es iz nit geshtoygn un nit gefloygn." (It just doesn't make sense.)

The following findings were presented at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Center in Edmonton, Alberta: When it comes to buckling up, pretty and ugly children were treated in starkly different ways, with seat belt use increasing in direct proportion to attractiveness. When a woman was in charge, 4% of the homeliest children were strapped in compared with 13.3% of the most attractive children. The difference was even more acute when fathers led the shopping expedition: none of the least attractive children were secured with seat belts, while 12.5% of the prettiest children were. Homely ("meeskeit") children were also more often out of sight of their parents and were more often allowed to "vandern" (wander) more than "tsen" (10) feet away.

The researchers made more than 400 observations of child-parent interactions in 14 supermarkets. (SuperSol was not one of them.)

Dr. W. Andrew Harrell, the leader of the research team, sees an evolutionary reason for the findings: pretty children represent the best genetic legacy, and therefore they get more care.

Harrell, in an e-mail, wrote,

I would agree with the Yiddish expression, "Yeder kind trogt zayn eygne brokhe arayn in der velt" (Each child carries his own blessing into the world) to the extent that if you ask parents, they will tell you that their children are all beautiful. (Even Sammy Davis, Jr.'s mom would have said so.) It is the actual parenting behavior that interests us--and this behavior is frequently at odds with parent's verbal descriptions of their parenting. We began observing parents and their children back in the 1970s, and have consistently found that child attractiveness influences parental attentiveness in a variety of settings and situations.

I am also a lawyer and have dealt with parents who profess their love for their children despite the fact that they have drowned them, shot them, or injured them in a variety of ways.

I am skeptical about what humans say about themselves or others. When it comes to parenting, I don't even believe that most parents are even conscious of their actions or words. As to common sense explanations for behavior, Einstein, I believe, said that common sense informs us that the world is flat.

There have also been studies that showed that attractive students were likely to get more attention from "der lerer" (the teacher), and good looking children get away with more transgressions. They are more likely to be believed in court. Other studies confirm that mothers and daycare workers smile, coo, kiss and hold pretty babies more than plain ones. Fathers are more involved with attractive babies, too.

Perhaps it's time for us all to remember these Yiddish expressions:

"Ale finger tuen glaykh vey." (All fingers hurt alike. All children are equally dear to parents.) Favoring one child over another is not only bad parenting, but it's also a sin.

"Me darf nit zayn sheyn; me darf hobn kheyn." (You don't have to be pretty if you have charm.)

"A meeseh moyd hot faynt dem shpigel." (A homely girl hates the mirror.)

"Az es zenen nito keyn andere mayles, iz a zumer-shprinkele oykh a mayle." (If a girl has no other virtues, even a freckle can be considered one.)