Mothers Are Being Blamed for Autism, Once Again

And it’s not just a matter of toughing it out. ACOG states that there are several conditions in pregnancy that acetaminophen is essential in helping to treat, including the life-threatening condition preeclampsia.

“The conditions people use acetaminophen to treat during pregnancy are far more dangerous than any theoretical risks and can create severe morbidity and mortality for the pregnant person and the fetus,” the statement reads.

All of that aside, the idea that we need to discover a “cause” of autism is a flawed premise in and of itself.

“Autism is a diverse, lifelong disability with a complex spectrum, shaped by a combination of genetic, biological, and environmental factors,” the Autism Society of America said in a statement after Trump’s announcement. “To date, no single cause or cure has been identified after decades of rigorous research.”

Blaming the mother of a child for “causing” neurodiversity like autism is nothing new. It’s been happening since before we even had a name for the spectrum.

In the 1930s early researchers studying what we now call autism “identified aberrant parenting” as its cause, according to the AMA Journal of Ethics. One of the most well-known theories was that of the “refrigerator mother,” women whom the researcher Bruno Bettelheim claimed were “cold and detached” and whose terrible parenting led to their children becoming autistic.

This, of course, was completely bogus, Danielle Hall, the director of health equity at the Autism Society of America, tells Glamour, but the damage was huge. Not only were mothers stigmatized and ridden with guilt for decades over the claims, but meaningful research into the condition was significantly hindered because of the misinformation. Even well into the ’80s and ’90s, mothers were made to feel culpable in some way for their children being diagnosed.

“Just as disproven vaccine myths caused lasting harm, scapegoating a common, safe medication like acetaminophen threatens to retraumatize families, mislead the public, and undermine trust in science,” she says. “Autism does not have a single cause, and blaming mothers, whether through outdated theories or new unproven claims, distracts from what truly matters: expanding services, inclusion, and evidence-based supports that improve autistic lives.”

However, all these facts now face an uphill battle. When the most powerful person in the country declares something to be true, even if they are doing so “without the backing of reliable data,” as ACOG put it, it’s likely that many women will no longer feel comfortable using the painkiller during pregnancy, and mothers of autistic children could begin to believe that they are at fault for their children’s neurodiversity.

Noa Sterling, MD, FACOG, a board-certified ob-gyn and creator of Sterling Parents, a health education platform, has seen firsthand how quickly false claims, even when not cosigned by the president, can spread online. She educates her more than 300,000 followers on the medical science of pregnancy on Instagram daily, and she says she started her platform because she saw so much rampant misinformation online.

She finds the blame being placed on mothers to be incredibly frustrating and says it will just lead to more pain and anxiety for the women she speaks to.