Why looking at babies makes adults happy

Yesterday O-san came to the office with her six month old baby, after she had been away from work for eight months. She and I both agreed that the period felt much longer than eight months. On her side, giving birth to a baby had been a totally new experience, and for me as always, our experiences at e-Jan during the period made me feel that time is not only going really fast, but also that those experiences were so far in the past.

It is interesting to observe that babies have some kind of power to attract surrounding adults and make them happy. A little smile from the baby makes the adults smile back, but a little expression of discomfort makes them so worried. I have always wondered why they possess this irresistible charm.

The ability of communicate through facial expression is something babies obtain from a very early stage of development. It takes a long time for a human to crawl, let alone walk. Scientists say that due to the human brain growing too large, the only way to get through the birth canal, is to deform the skull when going through it and be born at an extremely premature stage. Thus, babies cannot do anything other than communicating by facial expressions in order to be protected by surrounding adults. So they are, in a sense, little professional charmers.

Quite a simple phenomenon, but knowing the rationalities behind it, I understand why babies are irresistibly charming to many of us. On top of that, people who have had experience bringing up babies have a stronger tendency to get charmed by them.