Who Is Shane McAnally? Gay Dad in Video of Baby Calling for ‘Mama'
Shane McAnally, the Grammy Award-winning country music singer, songwriter and record producer, this week shared a video of his child on Instagram that has quickly gone viral.
The video, which was shared with the text overlay "baby has 2 dads… chose neither," shows McAnally's child saying "mama," after being asked, "who do you want, dada or pop?"
The clip has quickly gone viral, and conservative voices have shared sharp criticism online.
Newsweek has contacted a representative for McAnally for comment via email.
Why It Matters
Amid a broader tilt toward conservatism in the United States, conservative voices have regularly moved to try to overturn gay marriage in the Supreme Court. In this landscape, conservative voices can often raise criticism of surrogacy and same-sex parenting. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that just over one-quarter (26 percent) of U.S. adults say that a married gay or lesbian couple raising children together is unacceptable.
Studies have consistently shown that children raised by same-sex parents often fare the same as or better than children of straight couples. Research published in BMJ Global Health in 2023 found that parents’ sexual orientation is not an important factor in children's development. That study was based on an analysis of 34 studies published between 1989 and April 2022 and was carried out in countries that legally recognize same-sex relationships.
Earlier researcher, published in 2017, also reflects this. A review of data from the National Health Interview Surveys from 2013 through to 2015 showed that the children of homosexual parents experience no greater emotional or psychological difficulties when compared with kids of heterosexual parents. Same-sex parents also makes up a very small percentage of the population. Research published by the Pew Research Center in 2025 showed that fewer than 1 percent of parents are married or living with a same-sex spouse.
What To Know
McAnally, 51, who is from Texas, has won four Grammy Awards and multiple awards from the Country Music Association. He has worked with country music artist Kacey Musgraves and collaborated with country music singer Brandy Clark in writing the musical Shucked.
He is married to Michael Baum, with whom he shares three children. They were legally married by Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, and McAnally has previously spoken about having struggled with his sexuality, as he originally knew no openly gay country music singers.
McAnally's youngest child, Texson Ray McAnally Baum, was born via surrogate in October 2025. He told People at the time: "We were instantly in love." His two older children are twins-daughter Dylan and son Dash.
On Instagram, he has more than 140,000 followers and often shares content about parenting. In December, when Texson was 6 weeks old, he shared a video with the text overlay "6 week old homophobic baby," which was viewed more than 36 million times. In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads.
In the most recent video McAnally has shared, Texson laughs and says the sound "ma ma ma," when asked if he wants "dada or pop." Later on, in the video, he cries and looks frustrated.
When they are developing, babies make babbling sounds. Simple forms of these sounds can be a labial (m, p or b) or dental (t, d, n and l) consonant followed by a wide vowel sound, like a. This can be why they say certain sounds when they are developing, alongside potentially repeating sounds heard in their environment, as per reporting on children’s speech sound development from the BBC.
The clip has prompted widespread backlash among conservatives, particularly on X. The social media account Right Angle News Network wrote in a post viewed 6.8 million times: "Two gay men in Nashville are sparking nationwide outrage after recording a video of themselves mocking the baby they had via surrogacy as it cries for its mother for content."
Other commentators weighed in to criticize that response. Social media user evan loves worf wrote in a post on X, viewed more than 120,000 times: "The baby does not say that and furthermore would not exist if not for its dads. The baby does not understand English. This is just pure homophobia."
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This story was originally published April 17, 2026 at 11:24 AM.