I agree the historical humanity of people towards children is nothing short of atrocious, but I still think it is at least part of the answer. Obviously people are affected to different degrees, and I think it's more of a sliding scale rather than an on/off switch. When that gets far enough to the off side as to condone murder though, whether infanticide, genocide, or one to one, I suspect those people/societies have more serious problems to deal with. The world is overly abundant with serial killers, mass murder's, genocidal maniacs, and all kinds in between and beyond. I do think this points out that genetic evolution is as happy to mess with 'good' traits as with 'bad'. They say the line between genius and maniac is a thin one, and I suspect that may be true for the rest of us average people as well. Most do manage to control it though, and I think in general people really do have a protective affinity towards children. Part of it may be that they are immediately recognizeable as non-threatening, and so a person can comfortably drop their guard and 'study' the 'object'. Which often times can lead to noticing positive or appealing factors. I think there is also a human vs non-human aspect to it. For example, very few people would consider a T-Rex 'cute' simply because he has that gigantic head :) Quite the opposite, I think more people would find the Brontosaurus far more cute, what with their relatively tiny little head in comparison to body size. Similarly, I don't think the ancients would have been as fearful of running into a Minotaur if he'd had a tiny little head the size of an Orange :) The head is only part of it though, and Tolkien tapped into that when creating the Hobbits, which are generally considered 'cute'. They have the big feet and I believe big hands, (at least in the story if not the movie,) but with relatively 'normal' sized heads. The Tolkien Dwarves had larger heads though, and aren't generally considered as cute, except in a gruff manner. That could have as much to do with the way they were portrayed though, so would be more societal oriented rather than long term genetic. I'm not sure there's actually an answer to all this :) but it sure is an interesting topic. Enough so as to solicit differring opions anyways, and that's almost always a good thing.