Just Blame Mom

Bruno Bettelheim’s Refrigerator Mothers

At a time when perfect mothering was synonymous with all that was right in postwar America, mothers of autistic children were held accountable for their children’s disorder and reviled. A compelling film called Refrigerator Mothers tells their stories.

When we think of the 1950’s and 1960’s, an image of the late Barbara Billingsley comes to mind. Billingsley’s portrayal of June Cleaver, mother of Beaver in the television series ‘Leave it to Beaver’ epitomized the comforting postwar mom we all wanted to have. Mrs. Cleaver was always pristine and calm, as she set about her housework in sweater set, pearls, heels, and frilly little apron. Beaver was always getting into mischief and June always knew how to fix things and make them right.

No Choice

Back then, a mother’s prime purpose was delineated for her in black and white: she was meant to raise neat, clean, happy children. June never had a choice, not that we think she would have chosen a different path—that would be unthinkable. But for the mother whose child received a diagnosis of autism, things were very different.

Little was known about autism at that time and so the experts pretty much made things up, blaming it all on mom. Instead of receiving the help and support she needed, the mother of an autistic child found herself reviled by a medical establishment who insisted that the autistic child’s weird behaviors were due to detached and frigid mothering. They even gave mom a psychiatric label: “refrigerator mother.”



Sacrificed Humanity

In the 2003 film Refrigerator Mothers, David E. Simpson (Director) and JJ Hanley (Producer) set out to show us what it was like to be the mother of an autistic child in that faraway time. Through the medium of film, we feel the lonely burden of having a child with a profound disorder, and we feel a mother’s pain as she is labeled both culpable and inhuman.
Once upon a time, these mothers had no voice, but today have emerged with resilience and strength to share their tragic stories. In their poignant retelling of those times, we see what happens when authoritative experts are not questioned and we sacrifice humanity in the search for answers.

At the forefront of the refrigerator mother theory was Bruno Bettelheim. The Austrian-born Dr. Bettelheim was an art historian who metamorphosed as the director of the Orthogenic School, the University of Chicago-sponsored home for disturbed children. Bettelheim’s theory held that children developed autism as the direct result of cold and distant mothering dispensed by what he termed “refrigerator mothers.”



Now we know better. We know that autism is a neurological condition. But in the 50’s and 60’s, Bettelheim’s theories were the flavor of the day and it was accepted that the onus was on mom. Traces of this cruel stigma still remain.