In this blog Dr Kate McAnelly explores the underpinnings of refrigerator mother theory and how it was incorrectly used to blame and vilify mothers as being the cause of their children’s autism.

Motherhood in and of itself has long been a space and mode of identity work in life that’s been loaded with judgement of perceived wrongdoings and failures. This judgement has been particularly visible, and keenly felt, by the mothers of disabled children who have been unfairly vilified by moralising of motherhood and disability. This topic first interested me when my now 18-year-old son was diagnosed as autistic when he was 3. As I attempted to make sense of the new mantle of “mother of a disabled child” that’d been thrust upon my shoulders, I began reading widely about the experiences of mothers who had been in my shoes. It didn’t take too long before I came across multiple historic narratives of tragedy, burden, loss, grief, stress, shame, embarrassment, fear, vulnerability and trauma. How had this come to be?

A not insubstantial number of these narratives had the advent of refrigerator mother theory to thank for how, and why, the mothers of disabled children had been vilified in this way. Refrigerator mother theory had its origins in the thinking of Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that almost all psychological issues stemmed from trauma of some kind in a child’s formative early childhood years, including trauma as a result of inadequate and/or neglectful parenting. This thinking was then expanded in the research of World War 2 era physicians Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger. Kanner and Asperger noted that the parents of the autistic children they worked with – mothers in particular – were cold and aloof in nature, and that this served to amplify the ‘problem’ of autism that was innate to their child.

The work of both men was later debunked as being rooted in flawed, unethical science as well as biases that centred a presumption of incompetence on the part of autistic children and their parents. However, in the meantime, their as yet nameless idea was picked up and ran with by the Austrian psychologist Bruno Bettelheim from the early 1950’s to the late 1970’s. Bettelheim claimed a prominent position of expertise in child development during this time with his views frequently being cited as universal truth in the international media. Bettelheim shifted the narrative generated by Kanner and Asperger from cold and aloof parenting being a contributing factor to children’s autism to one where cold and aloof mothering in particular was to blame.

The term ‘refrigerator mother’ emerged from this doubling down on blaming the mothers of autistic children as being the cause of their child’s autism, and became widely applied to mothers of disabled children more broadly. Claims that othered the parenting capacities of the mothers of disabled children as lacking or broken in some way contributed to significant, ongoing, adverse impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of these women. This othering frequently provoked feelings of hopelessness, fear, shame, desperation, embarrassment, a lack of confidence and failure within their mothering identity work. This in turn then bled into their relationships with their spouses, other children, wider families and communities. Mothers of disabled children deserved to be viewed and treated as the warm, caring, attuned parents they were who were highly knowledgeable about, and sensitive to, the needs of their children. Yet in being cast as ‘refrigerator mothers’, they were branded a fundamental causal factor of their child’s disability and were forced to take everything that came with that on the chin. The oppressive weight of the emotional labour they carried on their shoulders every day as they did their best to cope with the judgement of a world determined to misunderstand them can’t be overstated.

Bettelheim had a lot to answer for in terms of how refrigerator mother theory marginalised, discriminated against and excluded the mothers of disabled children from being the best parents they could, in a world not designed with the needs – and rights – of them or their children in mind. This was especially so as more became known about the actual physical, social and relational contributing factors to disability, and that these have nothing to do with cold and aloof mothering. The vilification of the mothers of disabled children still lingers now though, not as obvious but just as insidious in its wounding. The fact remains, however, that this vilification was, is and will always be manifestly unjust. The mothers of disabled children such as I’m proud to be, can and must be respected for the power, knowledge and expertise they bring to the parenting experience.

Dr Kate McAnelly is an early childhood teacher by profession, now working as a lecturer in early childhood education with the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, based in Dunedin. Her research interests include inclusive early childhood curriculum, pedagogies and learning environments, disabled children’s childhood studies, the rights of children and families to an inclusive education, the sociology of diverse childhoods, and the politics of inclusive education. The pathways that Kate’s taken into teaching and academia have been directly shaped by her experiences mothering a disabled child.

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