WHOM ARE MEXICAN INFANTS SAID TO RESEMBLE - MONITORING AND FOSTERING PATERNAL CONFIDENCE IN THE YUCATAN

It has been hypothesized (Daly and Wilson 1982) that resemblance claims about, and names given to, newborns will be biased in a paternal direction. There are also evolutionary reasons to expect that the magnitude of this bias will vary with the laterality of the speaker, the infants' birthorder, the duration of the parents' union, and the possibility that the pater might overhear the remarks. A series of 13 such predictions was examined in light of 198 interviews with the parents and relatives of a randomly selected sample of Mexican infants under the age of six months. The analyses indicate that, as hypothesized, paternal resemblance is alleged much more frequently than is maternal resemblance and that mothers and their relatives remark such resemblance more often than do paters and their relatives. In addition, allegations of paternal resemblance are more frequent for low-birthorder children and when the parents have been paired only briefly. Counter to expectations, the presence of the pater has no effect on mothers' tendencies to allege paternal resemblance, and children named after the pater are not more likely to be said to resemble him. Overall, our findings are in agreement with the assumption that evolved motives influence behavior.