Science has some bad news for the bearded: young children think you’re really, really unattractive.

A new study suggests that, until they reach puberty, kids are strongly anti-beard — although children with bearded fathers did feel more warmly toward facial hair.

Scientists going all the way back to Charles Darwin have pondered the purpose of beards. Darwin, who spent his later years sporting a large, bushy beard, thoughtbeards had somehow helped men charm the opposite sex.

“Until very recent history, beards were a very prominent element of men’s faces, and so we must have expectations related to those, and it turns out that adults do,” says Nicole Nelson, a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who studies face perception.

Actual scientific research on beards is, regrettably, scant. But Nelson says that over the last decade or so, work pioneered by her colleague Barnaby Dixson has shown that beards make men look older, stronger and more masculine — at least, to adults.

Kids See Bearded Men As Strong — But Unattractive, Study Finds

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