New evidence indicates that gay fathers actually develop
patterns, brain patterns, that are typical in both
straight men and straight women. This is really fascinating study because
it focuses primarily on brain scans. And what the researchers did--
and the researchers are from Israel-- is they scanned the brains of new mothers,
then they scanned the brains of new straight fathers and then they scanned
the brains of new gay fathers, and here's what they found.
In the study, the mothers, who played a primary caregiver role for their
children, demonstrated heightened activity in their brain's emotion-
processing regions
when watching their children. The straight fathers, playing a traditional secondary
parenting role, exhibited increased
cognitive activity in the brain. So the women were
much more emotional, the men were much more cognitive.
...demonstrating awareness of what their children's cries and cues were trying
to communicate.
But the gay fathers demonstrated both the mother's emotional and father's
cognitive brain activity, suggesting
that they were at least according to their brains, operating like both mothers
and fathers. And so the researchers said that, you know, the men's brains
are very plastic, so they can adapt to the given situation. They can play both
roles, which is really, really fascinating stuff.
Well, apparently they're like super men-- and super women. I wonder if there's gonna be
some jealousy coming out of this research.
- They can apparently do both. - They have superior brains. - Ex--well, clearly.
They're smarter, more cognitive and more emotional. We also should bear in
mind, like they're focusing here on the effect on gay parents because
I assume they have sort of an agenda. Thankfully, the science supports the
agenda that
they can fill both roles and it's ridiculous to say that a kid can only be
brought up in a healthy fashion if he's with
a traditional one-male one-female relationship.
But I'm sure this is, as they say, is just as true if
a guy has to raise a kid all by himself or a single mother, like,
they will have to fill both of those roles.
The brain is plastic, not just for the gay couples, it's plastic for us as well.
And feeling like we should be constrained by gender roles
that were developed in the
20s and 30s and 40s? That's ridiculous. We are more
plastic than that. We can fill more roles
and what it means to be a mother and what it means to be a father isn't the same as
it was when--
even when we were kids, let alone when our parents were kids.
Right, so this summer--this coming summer-- the National Organization for Marriage,
along with Mike Huckabee, are planning on doing this march in Washington DC to
kind of protest
same-sex marriage and marriage equality. And one of the reasons why they do
that is because they feel that children
that are raised in same-sex households do not fare well.
But it's really interesting to hear that argument because there's a growing body
of evidence that proves that wrong. I mean, we had done studies about this or
had reported on studies about this previously, in previous years,
and it shows that, hey, not only do children do just as well as,
you know, children in heterosexual families, but in some cases they might do
- even better-- - (man) Yeah.
And now we have actual brain scans showing that there's really no
element lacking in the parenting, in terms of their brains and what they're
likely to
- do to raise their children. - So you're totally right about the science
and I'm glad that we have the science on our side there, but also all of that
should be completely irrelevant. Like the fact that, even if we found that the
kids they raised weren't as psychologically developed, or weren't as
emotionally developed...
doesn't mean they don't have the right to raise kids! I've a feeling that really
stupid people probably don't raise kids that are all that well off. We still let
them procreate.
- (woman) Can we mention Honey Boo-Boo? - Exactly! - Is that okay? - Yeah, like, okay if you did the study
and you found that one racial group had kids that were, on average, had an IQ two
points lower,
we don't bar them from having children. Like, this is a sideshow
that the conservatives bring up, that they're not even right on, to try to stop people from--
stop gay people from having the same rights as everybody else.
But at the end of the day, it's irrelevant. They wouldn't bar people with some sort of
handicap from having kids if they had data that they couldn't raise kids,
- so there's no reason why that should apply to gay people. - (woman) Yeah.