Refrigerator Mothers
A look at the fallout from the American medical establishment's incorrect assessment in the 1950s that autism was the result of poor mothering, leaving a generation of women who were branded emotionally frigid, or "refrigerator mothers," with permanent scars.
From the 1950s through the '70s, the medical establishment thought it had found the root cause of autism: poor mothering. Doctors presumed that the bizarre behaviors of autistic children stemmed from their mothers' emotional frigidity. Now we know that autism is a brain disorder. But for a generation of women, branded as cold "refrigerator mothers," the damage had been done.