“He’s five months old. He doesn’t understand English.”
Right.
The baby understands something deeper.
Why is it that “mama” (or some version of it) shows up in nearly every language on earth? Chinese, Arabic, Spanish. Cultures separated by continents, histories, and entirely different linguistic families — and yet they all landed on the same sound for the same person?
That’s not coincidence. That’s anthropology.
“Ma” is one of the very first sounds a baby can make. It’s the natural position of the mouth during nursing. Long before a child understands words, he forms that sound. And who answers?
Across time, across cultures, across civilizations it is the woman who carried him, the woman whose body he knows.
Humanity didn’t invent “mama.” We recognized it.
So no, he doesn’t understand English.
But he does understand that something (or someone) is missing.
And what makes that video so disturbing isn’t just the cruelty of laughing at a distressed baby. It’s the denial of the human non-negotiable that children come from, and are made for, a mother.
They can mock the baby's babbling. But the can't erase the reality it points to.
That baby isn’t confused. The gay men are.
NEW: The gay man with a surrogate baby is standing by his video of his baby saying 'Mama' following online backlash, tells the Daily Mail that he finds the video "hilarious."
51-year-old Grammy Award winner Shane McAnally says he and his husband find the video "hilarious."
"We found it hilarious. He's five months old, he obviously doesn't understand English."
"I was appalled by what some people have been saying. Some people have taken it out of context."
"Babies usually say dada first, but people wouldn't then say the babies are only wanting their dads? It doesn't really make sense."
Every child deserves a mother.