A new study shows that having a child triggers changes in a mother’s brain — and that becoming a parent via surrogacy can trigger changes in a gay man’s brain, too. Interestingly, the gay men’s pattern of brain activity “resembles that of both new mothers and new fathers,” reports Reuters. The article speculates that the research “could feed into the debate over whether gay men should be allowed to adopt children.” As fascinating as the findings may be, I rather hope they’re not used in the adoption argument.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that watching their babies triggered activity in the emotion-processing regions of primary-caregiving mothers’ brains. For secondary-caregiving straight (and presumably cis) fathers, it triggered activity in the brain’s cognitive circuits. Gay primary-caregiving dads, however, experienced greater activity in both areas, and “the brain also had extra communication lines between emotional and cognitive structures.”
Lead researcher Ruth Feldman does not believe the gay fathers’ brain activity differed because they were gay, Science magazine clarifies. Rather, “This finding argues strongly that the experience of hands-on parenting, with no female mother anywhere in the picture, can configure a caregiver’s brain in the same way that pregnancy and childbirth do.” One might assume that primary-caregiving straight fathers (including, but not limited to, single dads) would also exhibit the configuration experienced by primary-caregiving gay fathers — but that’s for a future study.
The findings are interesting enough. What I’m having trouble with is the implication from some news organizations that these findings might apply to the question of whether gay men should adopt children. Not only Reuters, but also TIME implies this, saying, “This study suggests that, biologically, gay couples are fit to be parents as straight couples are, and could change the debate as to whether gay men should be allowed to adopt children.”
Oh, please. When study after study has already shown that children of same-sex couples are as likely to be happy and well adjusted as any others, do we really think that a study based on brain scans of their parents will “change the debate”? Our children’s actual experiences, collected and analyzed over many years, should count for a lot more than one study about how parents’ brains work.
Not that the study is worthless. I believe it documents an interesting and important shift in people’s minds when they become parents (and if you don’t believe me, check out gay dad Jeremy Hooper’s perspective at Good As You). To apply it to the adoption debate, however, seems to be trying to prove something that’s already been proven more strongly, thus discounting that earlier work. I don’t like the simplistic implication, from the way Reuters and TIME have framed the issue, that until we have proof from their brain scans that gay men can be emotional as well as cognitive, there’s still doubt over whether they can be both, or whether they’ll be good parents. The brain scans may help us understand how and why they develop certain parenting skills — but that they can and have developed them has, I believe, already been shown via the many children they’ve successfully raised.