@maximus otter precisely so.
Desmond Morris (in the earliest days of coffee-table anthropology cf his book
Manwatching) points-out that the bald/toothless/curled/subcommunicative state shared by human/primate newborn babies and very-old humans may well be a convergent evolutionary self-defence mechanism.
He similarly opines (without originality, I think, but with plenty of acclaim) that the animal characteristic big round eyes (including skull orbits)/cranio-facial flatness/snub nose/gracile jaw is all part of an emergent
moê effect
This does start to get into some contentious areas of human / primate behaviour and essence-of-being, some of which
may be convergently-recapitulated as parallelisms elsewhere within other sub-branches of the animal kingdom (setting-aside prey-predator aspects for a moment).
We also start entering the circular/inescapable conceptual mazes of whether or not ontogeny does or doesn't recapitulate phylogeny.
To paraphrase a number of popular science sources (and kin support hypotheses) all of humanity
may be seen collectively as being a form of feminised ape, within which dominant neotenic features are retained, arguably also promoting herd/generational intelligence in so doing.
The other aspect regarding retention of cuteness (as well as not being eaten, not being left behind) is that cute animals / humans
are (not just perceptually) more gamine/fecund than uncute ones.
Pretty people (and animals) are significantly-more fertile than ugly ones. Sperm motility, likelyhood of carrying a fœtus to term, lack of genetic defect, all are (to a substantial degree) peridestinated by cuteness. This is an inarguable (albeit potentially-offensive) aspect of human evolution.
In the same way that ill or dying people are
meant to smell bad, pretty/cute people have a (statistically-)nicer fragrance in empirical tests....