Parents-to-be often wish for a healthy baby who is the spitting image of them. But there are couples who desire children with the stunning good looks of a supermodel or exceptionally attractive actor. Is it only because they’re superficial? No, says BeautifulPeople.com, these folks want to birth beautiful babies because they feel their kids’ physical attractiveness will make them more marketable when they are competing for jobs in the future.

At BeautifulPeople.com, members can register for access to its virtual sperm and egg bank, a service that links prospective parents—with or without good looks—to physically attractive sperm and egg donors who are registered with the site. Finding your match is as easy as clicking on a few profiles.

Initially, BeautifulPeople.com wanted to create matches of a different kind: to connect “good-looking” people with each other so they could build romantic relationships. But the site’s founder, Robert Hinze, took things one step further by offering a “fertility introduction service.”

But what’s at the heart of this matter? What drives people to businesses like this? Wannabe parents shopping the site’s fertility introduction service might possibly believe in the “halo effect”—the psychological tendency to judge others based on one trait you approve of and then conclude that those who have that trait must possess other positive attributes.

And although the topic of “beauty” may seem trivial, research does show that attractive people have the doors of opportunity thrown wide open for them based on looks alone. What’s more, scientists found that people’s good looks also caused others to assume they were more intelligent, better adjusted and more popular than their less attractive counterparts.

And, yes, findings show that employers are more apt to hire attractive people and pay them a higher salary.

Those findings were reflected in an online survey of 202 corporate hiring managers and a telephone poll of 964 people nationwide. These surveys showed the following ugly and unfair results: 57 percent of managers believed a qualified but unattractive candidate had a harder time getting hired; 68 percent believed that employees’ looks consistently affected the way managers rated their job performance; 63 percent said being physically attractive was beneficial to men looking for work; and 72 percent felt attractiveness gave women an advantage.

The surveys also found that managers rated looks third on a list of the 10 most important personal attributes of job applicants. (Confidence and experience placed above physical attractiveness, but good looks placed above where the applicant went to school and whether he or she had a sense of humor.)

What’s more, study findings show preferential treatment of beautiful people begins early. Babies people consider cute are touched, held and spoken to more often in the hospital nursery. And in school, teachers interact more with attractive children––they’re asked more questions and picked on for more answers.

Why? Well, because of that halo effect.

But beyond this, what’s the down side to companies advertising beautiful people’s sperm and eggs and then facilitating fertility services?

While it’s already common for couples to select egg and sperm donors based on their genetic background and family history, this website uses people’s desire to have beautiful babies as a way to build business, says Rinku Mehta, MD, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Texas Fertility Center in Austin. And that may lead to disappointment—it may even cultivate social problems.

“People need to consider the fact that their child may not turn out to look like what they imagined,” Mehta warns. “[And if he or she doesn’t,] is that going to mean the child will be subjected to mistreatment or rejection?”

After all, someone’s looks result from complex gene interactions. And the traits parents want may not be expressed in their children, she adds.

What concerns Mehta is that if everyone wants to select their babies’ physical traits people may start to segregate individuals based on their appearance. That situation, Mehta says, could make money play a role in who could or couldn’t have designer babies. “Hopefully, we will never come to that point as that would be a grave misuse of technology developed to help otherwise infertile people to have a baby,” Mehta says.

Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates sperm and egg banks that provide services to infertile couples. But BeautifulPeople.com is only connecting attractive sperm and egg donors with people who seek them—the company doesn’t recover, process, store, label, package or distribute donated reproductive tissue (sperm or eggs)—as a result, it doesn’t have to answer to the FDA.

It’s also important to note that unlike sperm and egg banks, BeautifulPeople.com doesn’t screen donors for their medical records, risk factors and clinical evidence that confirms they’re disease free. In addition, the site doesn’t require couples to have medical reasons to join or to undergo psych evaluations.

All the site requires is that their applicants don’t mind being judged just on looks alone.