Is this a teddy-bear effect? Weird possibly NSFW ads on website; critical part quoted:

Since a teddy bear is often a child’s first toy, one hypothesis that teddy specialists wanted to test was that they evolved to please infants or young children. Researchers offered 4- to 8-year-old children their choice of teddies with adult features or ones with infantile features. The four-year-olds chose the adult-featured bear almost two and a half times more often than the baby-featured bear. Among the older children, 6 to 8 years of age, the babyish teddies were three times more likely to be chosen.

This makes perfect sense. Very young children are the only beings immune to cuteness. What good would it do a baby to attach to other babies? It is clearly in the babies’ interest to attach to adults.

The function of the evolved teddy is to please adults—and older children who are already playing at nurturing. These are the purchasers of toys supposedly bought for infants.

There was a famous children's story author who wrote 2 books. The first was from the POV of a kid continually being bothered by a bully. The second was the same story, from the POV of the bully. But I never read them. Wish I could remember the titles or author name.