The Single-Parented Brain
This is a study on animals, not humans, but it seems likely that we'll soon have evidence from MRIs and other tools to measure what it means to the brain to be the child of a single parent or a family that breaks up.
Shirley S. Wang writes in the WSJ about small rodents called degus, related to guinea pigs and chinchillas, and research by German biologist Anna Katharina Braun and her colleagues on what happens when they remove Daddy. An excerpt:
Their preliminary analysis indicates that fatherless degu pups exhibit more aggressive and impulsive behavior than pups raised by two parents.In a study the researchers presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago earlier this month and recently published in the journal Neuroscience, half the degus were raised with two parents, while the others were raised by a single mother, the father having been removed from the cage one day after the birth of his offspring.
Dr. Braun and her colleagues found that in the two-parent families, the degu mothers and fathers cared for their pups in similar ways, including sleeping next to or crouching over them, licking and grooming them, and playing with them. The fathers even exhibited a "nursing-type" position.
When the mother was a single parent, the frequency of her interactions with her pups didn't change much, which means that those pups experienced significantly less touching and interaction than those with two parents.
The researchers then looked at the neurons--cells that send and receive messages between the brain and the body--of some pups at day 21, around the time they were weaned from their mothers, and others at day 90, which is considered adulthood for the species.
Neurons have branches, known as dendrites, that conduct electrical signals received from other nerve cells to the body, or trunk, of the neuron. The leaves of the dendrites are protrusions called dendritic spines that receive messages and serve as the contact between neurons.
Dr. Braun's group found that at 21 days, the fatherless animals had less dense dendritic spines compared to animals raised by both parents, though they "caught up" by day 90. However, the length of some types of dendrites was significantly shorter in some parts of the brain, even in adulthood, in fatherless animals.
"It just shows that parents are leaving footprints on the brain of their kids," says Dr. Braun, 54 years old.
Comments
From the article, posted by the sagacious and lovely Advice Goddess: "Their preliminary analysis indicates that fatherless degu pups exhibit more aggressive and impulsive behavior than pups raised by two parents. "
I would have to know, specifically what "aggressive and impulsive behavior" was being displayed.
Aggressive is a neutral attribute, some cases good, some not so good, while "impulsive" can easily be spun into a desirable trait.
Without a clear understanding that these guinea pig wannabes are doing, we can't adequately suggest that daddys are an important factor for the poor orphaned chinchilla.
Posted by: Patrick at November 7, 2009 1:37 AM
Several years ago there was an article in, I think, National Geographic detailing how fatherless elephants become 'juvenile delinquents'. When many adult males were killed at one time for ivory, it left lots of little ones with no fathers. They proceeded to form gangs and bully weaker and older elephants. Here's a more recent one from the BBC-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/642731.stm
Posted by: crella at November 7, 2009 3:12 AM
Speaking from personal experience, I know that being raised in a single mother household definitely had a lot of negative effects on my development. Even though I didn't understand it at the time. When you are growing up and have never known anything different, you tend to accept things as normal.
Perhaps one of the biggest problems with single parent families is that there are fewer 'checks and balances' than in other families. When a child has two parents, there is some possibility that the negative influences or behaviors of one parent will be balanced out by the other parent, or that one parent will intervene if the other parent is doing the wrong thing. A single parent family is effectively an absolute dictatorship.
Posted by: Nick S at November 7, 2009 3:52 AM
> we can't adequately suggest that
> daddys are an important factor
> for the poor orphaned chinchilla.
That's where you're immortal soul's at... We can't adequately suggest. This is science, right? We need more studies!
Posted by: Crid [CridComment @ gmail] at November 7, 2009 7:43 AM
And yet we can't wait to boot dads out of the house, and we celebrate and encourage single and lesbian motherhood as they churn out the next generation of inmates, addicts, dropouts, sluts, abusers, suicides, etc.
We will end up paying dearly for this 40 year-long effort to disenfranchise men from marriage and fatherhood. We "liberate" women by allowing them to be free of the baleful presence of men, and instead to become harem to the ultimate Alpha -- the almighty government-as-husband. Men are reduced to inseminators (voluntary or not) and "catch me if you can" wallets. Breeder women suck at the teats of the taxpayers -- who are still mostly men, but probably not for long.
Men's incentive to work hard enough to produce at a level sufficient to support a wife and family has largely been destroyed. (Thus all the reports of the "Peter Pan Syndrome" and "slacker" mentality.) The level of income earned, and the share of taxes paid, by men will go down. The lost production and tax revenue will either have to be made up through the collective sweat of women's brows, or, much more likely, it will just vanish. As a consquence of losing the engine that drives progress and prosperity, and with it, freedom (the attributes of a "patriarchal" society), our existence will degrade substantially, and our days as a free people will be numbered.
If women that I love dearly weren't caught up in all of this mess and suffering for it, I would just sit back and relish what women are doing to themselves, how they are becoming enslaved as wage and tax drones, even as they think they are grabbing "power" from men.
It is deluded, really. But of course, only someone who wants something for nothing can really be conned.
I miss the days before feminism stripped away my ability to view women as the "better half", who deserved to be provided for and protected by men. It has always been a dog-eat-dog world for men. If half of the dogs are now bitches, at their own insistence, then so be it. But a word to the wise, gals: protect yourself at all times, now that you have become men's ruthless competitors rather than their cherished "better half."
Posted by: Jay R at November 7, 2009 3:46 PM
Sorry for the double post! I thought the first one didn't "take."
Posted by: Jay R at November 7, 2009 3:49 PM
"That's where you're immortal soul's at... We can't adequately suggest. This is science, right? We need more studies!"
Well said Crid. You always do a good job of skewering intellectual pretense.
It is always the standard obfuscation in these debates for people to say 'oh, we don't know enough. We need more studies.' blah blah blah.
While there may be cases where the evidence is not overwhelming either way, the most sensible strategy in those circumstances is to:
a) go with what seems most likely, and
b) consider the precautionary principle
If there is significant evidence to suggest that children raised in fatherless homes turn out significantly worse, it would be foolish to ignore that and go blithely along declaring 'oh well, the case hasn't been scientifically proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. So we'll just let things slide until the jury gets back to us'.
Posted by: Nick S at November 7, 2009 11:59 PM
Aggressive is a neutral attribute, some cases good, some not so good, while "impulsive" can easily be spun into a desirable trait.
Without a clear understanding that these guinea pig wannabes are doing, we can't adequately suggest that daddys are an important factor for the poor orphaned chinchilla.
Patrick, you're not correct here. In animal research, things like aggression are objectively defined. Populations of research animals are genetically quite similar. The conditions in each environment were identical but for the presence or absence of the father. Therefore, we can attribute differences in behavior and dendritic arborization to that presence or absence with reasonably high confidence. This is how science works.
What was interesting to me was the regions where there were differences in dendritic arborization - the prefrontal cortex (high level cortical function) and the amygdala (emotional regulation). One of the primary ways the PFC regulates brain function in other areas is via inhibitory connections. In essence, these degus lacked the ability to regulate emotional responses. Does sound a lot like what happens to children in single-parent homes.
Posted by: Whatever at November 8, 2009 9:56 AM
> a lot like what happens to children in
> single-parent homes.
Single parent or fatherless? I hate pussyfooters.
Posted by: Crid [CridComment @ gmail] at November 9, 2009 1:57 AM
I meant it the way I wrote it: single parent. Dad or mom, when there is only parent on board, the kid's not getting enough attention.
Posted by: Whatever at November 9, 2009 6:22 PM
