Rutgers–Camden Student Researcher Explores Origins of Maternal Blame in Autism

CAMDEN – As researchers continue to predict rises in autism, an origin for the developmental disorder that affects one in 150 children remains unresolved. But that wasn’t so 60 years ago, when doctors had a clear cause: mom.

A Rutgers University—Camden undergraduate student is spending her summer delving into psychiatric journals of the 1940s through the 70s for insight on the transition from blaming mothers for their children’s autism to taking a neurological approach to the disorder.

Motivated by her own sister’s trials with raising an autistic son, Jennifer Parker of West Creek, N.J., received a Rutgers–Camden Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Grant to study three leading psychiatric journals between 1943, when the disorder was first identified, to 1977, when new explanations for autism emerged. The women’s studies major says how we first came to think of the disorder characterized by impaired social interaction still impacts parents of children with autism today.

“My sister is happy I’m advocating for past mothers of autism,” Jennifer says of her sibling, Renee.  “But it hasn’t been easy for her or her family.” At five years old nephew Anthony, who was diagnosed with autism in 2006, isn’t toilet trained and can’t speak in full sentences. “She has felt judged by a lot of people for his behavior, including doctors,” adds Jennifer, who transferred to Rutgers–Camden from Texas State University, where she volunteered with autistic children.

In various regional libraries, including Swarthmore College’s McCabe Library, the University of Pennsylvania’s Biomedical Library, and Pennsylvania Hospital’s Medical Library, Jennifer has scoured old copies of the Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, the Journal of the American Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Journal of Psychiatry.

The Rutgers–Camden senior is often shocked by articles written by prominent physicians, including early autism researcher Leo Kanner, who coined the term “refrigerator mothers” to describe “cold” mothers who forced their children into autism. In 1949, Kanner wrote: “[Children] were left neatly in refrigerators which did not defrost. Their withdrawal seems to be an act of turning away from such a situation to seek comfort in solitude.”

“Jen is looking to see when and why mental-health professionals stopped blaming ‘refrigerator mothers’ for their children’s illnesses and started locating autism in neurology, not neurosis,” states the author of Sonia’s Daughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Russia (University of California Press, 1995). “An extremely bright and committed student, Jen has a sophisticated grasp of gender issues that makes her a perfect person for this scholarly quest.”

Jennifer, a 2003 Pinelands Regional High School graduate, plans to submit her findings later this summer and further develop this research through an independent study at Rutgers–Camden in the fall.

-30 -