The Star Online: Lifestyle: Parenting
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Parenting |
| 'Is he daddy or mummy?' Study reveals gay dads 'think' as both parents Posted: 29 May 2014 12:35 AM PDT A new study on the brain wave patterns of parents found surprising evidence that the brains of gay men raising children adopted through surrogacy resemble that of both new mums and dads. The research, reported on May 26, could feed into the debate over whether gay men should be allowed to adopt children. Many US adoption agencies will not work with same-sex couples, and some states prohibit them from adopting.  Famous gay dads: Neil Patrick Harris (above, left) and David Burtka with their two children. Ricky Martin (below) with his twins.  The current study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted in Israel, and builds on work by neuropsychologist Ruth Feldman of Bar-Ilan University and others, who showed that the brains of new mothers become hyper-reactive to their child's cries and other emotional cues. It was not clear if that pattern is a result of the hormonal and other changes that accompany pregnancy or a response to the experience of motherhood. To find out, Feldman and her colleagues videotaped 89 new mothers and fathers interacting with their infants at home. They then measured the parents' brain activity while watching the videos in an MRI tube, and again (to establish a baseline) while watching videos that their kids did not star in. In the 20 mothers in the study, all primary caregivers, watching their babies triggered heightened activity in the brain's emotion-processing regions, particularly in a structure called the amygdala, which was five times more active than at baseline. "These are regions that respond unconsciously to signs of an infants' needs, and that derive deep emotional reward from seeing the baby," Feldman said. For the 21 heterosexual fathers – who were very involved in raising their baby but whose wives took the parenting lead – watching their infant increased activation of cognitive circuits, particularly a structure that interprets a baby's cries and non-verbal cues. It is the region that knows which squirm means 'I'm about to scream' and which means 'change me'.  Model parents: Actors Jesse Tyler Ferguson (left) and Eric Stonestreet as gay fathers Mitchell Pritchett and Cameron Tucker in the US TV drama Modern Family. The TV gay couple have been hailed as a groundbreaking representation of real-life gay fathers. Both mum and dad However, the 48 gay fathers raising children with their husbands seemed to be both mum and dad, brain-wise. Their emotional circuits were as active as those of mothers and the interpretive circuits showed the same extra activity as that of heterosexual fathers. Ideally, scientists would perform neuroimaging on men and women before and then after they became parents, to show definitely that any heightened activity followed junior's arrival and was not present before. Until they can do that, Feldman said, she is confident that the tell-tale brain activity results from parenting. In gay fathers, but not heterosexual ones, the brain also had extra communication lines between emotional and cognitive structures. The more time a man spent as primary caregiver, the greater the connectivity. It was as if playing both parental roles caused the brain to integrate the structures required for each. "Fathers' brains are very plastic," Feldman said. "When there are two fathers, their brains must recruit both networks, the emotional and cognitive, for optimal parenting." – Reuters |
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