Whether a Heterosexual Mother or a Homosexual Father, Primary Caretaking of Children Is Similar

Can fathers care for children as well as mothers do? To compare brain activation differences in maternal versus paternal primary caretakers, these researchers took advantage of the increasingly common phenomenon of two-father families.

Participants were 20 heterosexual couples — 20 mothers who were primary caretakers and 20 fathers who were secondary caretakers — and 23 homosexual couples, of whom one father was biological via surrogacy and the other adoptive, but both were primary caretakers. Researchers videotaped parent-child interactions during a home visit, which were later scored for parent-child synchrony (child mean age, 11 months). At a subsequent visit, parents watched the videos while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imagi…