Survival of the Cutest

A little late but WELCOME BABY ADELAIDE!

One of my professors for my social psychology classes in college introduced this theory that's a spinoff of Darwin's survival of the fittest.  He called it the survival of the cutest.  He introduced the concept by showing us pictures of baby animals.  You could hear every female in the lecture hall aww over the cuteness.  He asked, "What makes these baby animals so darn cute?"  People started coming up with answers but none of them seemed to be what made them all cute.  He then said, "Big heads."

He proposed that all animals- including humans- are born with essences of cuteness that grown up animals do not possess.  In fact, if adult animals possess the same traits, they would be considered to be ugly and weird to their species, not to mention that they would have less of a survival advantage.  The reason for the cuteness is to help the animals survive.  Mothers, he stated, sacrifice very much for their young and their offspring cannot return anything to their mothers.  Therefore, mothers do not really have any rewards from raising their own babies except for their own babies' cuteness.  Babies are cute so that their mothers would want to take care of them.  Mothers are rewarded in cuteness.  Interesting, eh?

I thought about this survival of the cutest when one of my friends was carrying Addie in her arms and Addie had one of her arms stretched out over her head.  She pointed out that babies have such big heads that even with their arms stretched out, they cannot reach past the top of their heads.  Imagine how ugly and weird we adults would be if we had big heads, not to mention all the brain cells we would lose from bumping our heads into things.

Arms definitely cannot be raised over her head...

When I was pregnant, I hated going out of the house because I felt tired and my sciatica hurt so badly.  As soon as I came home from the hospital, I've been going out whenever I had the chance to because I missed enjoying going out.  Whenever people saw our baby, they would all say the same thing, "Aww, she's so cute!"  Some would even add the, "She's the cutest baby ever!"  I thank them even though I know most of them don't really mean it.  I think it's funny how that's the default thing to say when you see a newborn baby.  Maybe all of us humans subconsciously know that it's rewarding to the mothers when we say that their babies are cute and even the cutest of all babies.

Why do I talk about this survival of the cutest for four long paragraphs?  It's because I do have a cute baby, in fact, she is the cutest of all babies... to me.  I would much rather take care of Addie over the numerous babies (cute or not cute) I see everyday (side note: I seem to see more babies now that I have my own, than I did before I gave birth).  So I guess this survival of the cutest is true.

Recently, I've been thinking about and documenting how cute our baby is.  While I marvel at her cuteness, I wonder if God has this sort of feeling towards us.  I cannot say whether or not He thinks we're cute but He considers us to be helpless like little babies.  He loves us and takes care of us even though we do not reward Him.  We can't pay Him back for His love with money or good works.

Everyone asks me, "Do you have a boy or a girl?"  I tell them that I have a girl and the typical response is this, "Oh, how wonderful!  Girls are easier than boys to take care of.  I enjoyed taking care of my daughter when she was little."  I feel relieved but then they add, "But when they get into their teens, you never see them and they practically hate you."  I get flashbacks and shudder.  "But don't worry because when they grow up, they will take care of you."

Silly Josh, everyone knows you can't eat a cute baby.

I wonder if there were no benefits- no cuteness, no future care-taking- would we still choose to have children?  I think not, even for those who say they love children.  Isn't it amazing to think that God still chose to adopt us as His children even though we are troublesome and our heart attitude towards Him is like that of a teenager?  We are in every way dependent on Him, yet we desire to be independent from Him.  This desire for independence is so strong that we rebel against Him.  But, like the broke teenager running to her parents for money, we run to God when we realize that we're stuck and need Him to do something for us.

Isn't it even more amazing to know that He knew beforehand that we would be rebellious, He would sacrifice His Son to save us, and He would not be rewarded for His works; yet He still chose to redeem us and call us His children?

Side note:  A friend of ours sent Josh this article and Josh sent it to me.  Sometimes I wish these things would come up when I actually need it and not a year afterwards. It would've been a lot easier to convince Josh:

Dear Young Christian Husband with a Job and a Healthy Wife Who Wants to Have a Baby