Thanks, Toby! I pinned your comment. As I tried to make clear here, I do think vaccines are part of the puzzle, I'm just not convinced they're the biggest piece. From what I can tell, the recipe for a vaccine injury is Tylenol use + poor dietary choices before and/or after vaccines + baby or toddler has high stress levels. (Possibly Vitamin D deficiency as well? Parents are told to keep their children out of the sun ... you see so many kids hidden away in covered strollers when they're outside). An important point here is that this can happen with very loving parents! Parents are TOLD to give their kids Tylenol (it's basically recommended every time I've interacted with a doctor or nurse regarding my kid being a little sick), healthcare workers recommend foods like Cheerios as a first food (I read somewhere that glyphosate might increase heavy metal accumulation?), sleep training is encouraged, as is, at least in the States, mothers going back to work as early as possible and putting the kid in daycare (higher stress levels, poorer detoxification). Once you notice it, it really starts to feel like we're living in a murder-suicide cult.
I agree that everything is multi-factor (and includes interactions between our genes and the environment). I strongly believe (based on 9 years of research) that vaccines player a bigger role than most people are comfortable admitting. And I 100% support LGBT equality. It's just that the sharp rise in trans prevalence appears to be from toxicants.
Yes, I understand :-) I feel similarly. And supporting the view that vaccines are playing a significant role, I suspect anything that disrupts right hemisphere brain development, especially in the first three years is largely involved ... this theoretically would include vaccines given from ages 0-3, and any vaccines given to mothers while pregnant. Theoretically, it would also mean there's a sensitive window from roughly ages 10/11-25. My issue is with the claim that they are the "primary" cause, especially when this claim is made based on correlational data that doesn't control for confounding factors.
I'm aware! I've actually engaged with a lot of the anti-vax arguments. As I said above, it's not that I deny that vaccines are playing a role in the rise of various ailments etc but that I think it's very multifactorial and there are other causes as well, other toxins, poor diet, and social causes (e.g. parenting styles), all of which are interlinked in a way in that they drive right-hemisphere dysfunction and a disconnection from others, the embodied sense of self, and nature / spirit. I worry that that the hyper-focus on vaccines downplays the other major factors, in particular the social / cultural ones. As well, while I have little doubt that some vaccines cause more harm than good, I suspect there are still some where the pros of vaccination (preventing a serious illness) outweigh the potential harms -- or the harms can be mitigated / prevented by controlling for the other factors, which makes them important to study and consider. I think vaccines need to be studied more, and that any suppressed data on them needs to be released, but I don't like that they are being used as a scapegoat when there's clearly a lot more going on.
They are ALL bioweapons. And Dr. Andrew Moulden stated that every vaccine caused neurological damage--a "stroke" to the brain. He was working on a detox video when he was m*rdered.
That may be the case -- but my point is still relevant. Homosexuality, mental illness, autistic traits, and even transgenderism all predate the invention of vaccines, and other causes have been found in research and have been discusses anecdotally. Vaccines may be contributing, but they definitely are not the only cause and the evidence doesn't yet support them being the primary cause.
Well, you haven't lost me, Meghan. I think the more you write courageously from your own beliefs, the more your audience will find you. I have shared your "ideologically homeless, and frustrated" sentiment -- and still do, at times -- but am grateful for the unique community that has slowly built itself around my stack.
The sad truth is that extreme views and opinions are quicker to attract attention because people love to hate. Those of us who attempt to see more than one side are just not as sexy! :-)
Keep up the excellent work. And if you feel like, it, pop in to The Art of Freedom; you'll definitely find some kindred spirits there. xox
I find it interesting how many factors can contribute to rising rates of autism and LGBTQ+ identification. It's not just vaccines but a mix of many things. 🤔 Excellent work, fantastic writing! 🌟
I am glad others noticed those substacks. I too commented on 2 of them. These identities are so clearly multifactorial but honestly I point to industry as by far the biggest factor. What we are seeing seems to be a well intentioned but with a "everything looks like a nail to a carpenter" kind of twist. Plus social contagions are weird - very weird. I don't deny an autism connection but there are far too many normal kids turning 'trans' suddenly that are not autistic and never had 'gender' issues until they discovered 'trans.' Naming a condition creates patients. Industry knows this. The behavior of 'being dysphoric' (teen girls love this term), taking on alternative names, dressing like the opposite sex, etc is contagious. Friend groups seek testosterone together, they take friends to their 'gender reveal' where their mutilated breasts are unwrapped, etc. They post on social media, they garner likes and clicks, some turn into influencers and get cuts from companies that sell binders, packers, etc...
You do not need vaccines to create a social contagion, you need a giant psychological operation. Also the autism industry seems to want to create trans kids for industry, is it autism that causes 'transgender' or the fact the sex reassignment industry exists at all? Remove the option, there will be no patients. This is what must happen. There are time tested ways to nurture youth in natural bodies of course.
To clarify the mushrooms comment, I mean in a ceremony setting with trained facilitators who know what they're doing, and with counselling before and after.
I agree that social contagion is playing a huge role, but I still think there's a bunch of stuff happening with brain-gut development and/or hormone levels to make this "social contagion" possible. Young people in distress look for a narrative to explain their distress, this one is provided, but the causes of the distress are multifactorial and probably to some degree unique in every case. I've noticed a significant relationship between processed food and refined sugar consumption and "queer" identities (but again that might be via the autism pathway).
I have mixed feelings about removing the option for sex reassignment. I had a friend growing up who was VERY gender nonconforming (like from when we were toddlers) not a "rapid-onset" case at all, and to my awareness this friend truly became happier after being able to transition as an adult. I think adults, at least, should have the option to pursue this if they wish, but they also deserve to be fully informed of the risks. I've been nosing around in history books and it's clear to me that there's always been a minority of people who are going to want to self-castrate or alter their sex in some way, to live as the other sex. There's evidence of transexual cults in the ancient days, dedicated to Inanna / Ishtar. I don't think banning outright is a good solution. (I have some controversial ideas, like "if someone wants to transition they should do a hero-dose of magic mushrooms first", since I think that would help filter out people for whom transition is not appropriate, plus the various healing powers of mushrooms would probably improve the odds of surgeries going well).
I appreciate the comments. Nature is amazing and although I only enjoy mushrooms in cuisine, I know some people who have had positive medicinal results. The only long term study that constantly gets referenced is one out of Sweden where an older cohort had an increased risk of suicide, suicide ideation, and shortened lives. It is very difficult to argue the benefits for a psychological condition with no markers IMO. It is all subjective which is not evidence at all. I know countless parents where indeed social contagion is an enormous factor. Few people understand social contagions because they are so weird and they lead people down all sorts of paths searching for answers. I have written about this in a piece on 'gender dysphoria.'
I think several things can be true at the same time! As I mentioned, I grew up with someone who was gender dysphoric from an extremely young age, well before there was a social contagion. People came up to us on the playground when we were like 7/8 and asked my friend if they were a boy or girl, and my friend would smile and say "Guess!" I'm worried the backlash against the social contagion aspect (which I think is largely a result of profit-driven motives on the part of Big Pharma, surgical equipment suppliers, and psychopathic surgeons, and of depopulation and eugenicist agendas) will hurt people who might actually benefit from access to sex-change drugs and surgeries (I say *might* because I'm not all-in on this argument, maybe if the world were more tolerant of gay people the surgeries wouldn't feel necessary; I also find the "Two Spirit" concept appealing, but it's worth noting that while the Indigenous history here has been muddled by colonialism etc and is difficult to ascertain, we can know for sure that no Indigenous Two Spirit person was being given hormones or getting surgeries prior to colonialism).
My understanding of the refrigerator mothers angle: there is a correlation, but the causality goes in the other direction.
We know for sure that emotionally neglecting or abusing children can cause all kinds of problems down the line. But I've also heard enough testimony from mothers who tried to do everything they thought right - some combination of become a stay-at-home mother, spend as much time with their babies as possible, breastfeed, home-cook meals, and hug their sweet child as much as possible.
And still, the children sometimes turned out autistic, and psychologists who blindly trusted "the experts" or "the science" diagnosed the autism and then turned on the mother accusing her of refrigerator-mothering, without bothering to observe how the mothers actually tried to interact with their child. The textbook said autism was caused by bad mothers, end of discussion.
I can't find the original source, but I know I read somewhere of a mother who said she'd had this dream before having her first child that she'd hug her child and it would be the most wonderful and fulfilling thing in the world. But the child, after growing out of infancy, screamed like it was being assaulted any time someone tried to hug it, so eventually the mother stopped trying. Of course, the child was diagnosed with autism, the mother was asked a bunch of questions like "how often do you hug your child", answered truthfully "not at all - he hates it" and was promptly put down for refrigerator-mothering. So yes, there's a correlation here between "autistic child" and "mother doesn't hug" - but the causality is in the other direction because some autistic children really hate being touched by other humans. The same goes for other observations - if your child doesn't react at all, or starts screaming and crying when you make funny faces at it, as a mother you will quite soon stop doing that, and then some well-meaning observer armed with a textbook on child development will note down "mother doesn't interact with baby in a normal way".
When the vaccines theory came out, it was a huge relief to many mothers, because if the cause of autism is vaccines then it's not their fault for being bad mothers, and would the very doctors who convinced them to vaccinate their kids please stop blaming it on them!
As far as I understand, the vaccines theory is held debunked because all the data in the studies making this claim was somewhere between really low quality, and completely fabricated. That doesn't mean that some new study couldn't prove a link if there is one, but I don't think anyone has done such a study. There's also a possible negative indicator in that after the vaccine theory came out, vaccination rates in children dropped as parents were (understandably) more reluctant to vaccinate their children - but this did not, as far as I know, lead to any measurable decline in rates of autism diagnoses.
The refrigerator mothers theory never seems to have had much solid evidence in its favor in the first place, beyond "Bruno Bettelheim said so and he's an expert so it's probably correct" - as far as I know there's no serious work that established any causation, beyond pure observation studies (which as I said above, can be hugely flawed).
The autism-LGBTQ+ (and especially the autism-trans/queer) links definitely seem real to me though. I mean, it's practically a meme in autism circles that if you put "autistic non-binary" in your profile online somewhere, someone will joke "you said the same thing twice". What's interesting to me here is that autism diagnoses always used to skew something like 4:1 biological male:female, and there was a lot of talk of whether we're missing all the autistic girls because the diagnosis was based solely on male examples. But I think trans, and especially non-binary, in Gen Z skews heavily biologically female, with diagnoses of autism and gender dysphoria often coming up together. Maybe we found the missing autistic girls? It would even make sense from a certain perspective, that if autism expresses itself as finding social norms harder to follow (or being completely oblivious to them) then you'd have a lot of trouble performing society's expectations of femininity, so you're much more likely to pick the one "opt out" route that modern society offers?
I don't think there are many people out there who still believe that all autism cases can be attributed to "refrigerator" mothering / parenting; too many other correlational links and potential causes have been identified. However, I do think that cold / neglectful / abusive parenting can contribute to the development of autism (in combination with other risk factors) or result in a child who would have been autistic no matter what having more severe symptoms.
It gets complicated because the other risk factors would be positively correlated with "cold" parenting. For example, a diet high in highly-processed convenience foods increases autism risk, but parents who are more neglectful and/or busy and/or food insecure are more likely to feed their kids such foods. Chronic stress -- say from being neglected or mistreated as a small child -- impairs the immune system and detoxification, leaving the child more vulnerable to illnesses, infections, and pharmaceutical injuries / adverse events which may contribute to autism. Genes that increase the risk of autism in a child (e.g. MTHFR mutations) would also increase the likelihood of autistic traits, mental illness, and physical illness in the parent(s) who passed them on, which in turn would increase the risk of "colder" parenting. Social isolation and excess screen time increase autism risk -- but again, which kid(s) would this disproportionately apply to?
Narcissistic parenting is a risk factor for autism and a wide range of other struggles in children. One of the issues with studying this -- or with trying to help these children -- is the nature of narcissism; most narcissists know how to put on a good show when they need to. The abuse, neglect, and manipulation they inflict is hidden. Narcissists also are very unlikely to take responsibility, and respond with anger ("narcissistic rage") when confronted.
However, autism is not a singular condition, but an umbrella diagnosis, and it can be caused by factors completely unrelated to parental warmth. I really have no idea what the breakdown is, but if I had to guess, "cold" parenting is less likely to be the dominant factor today than 50+ years ago. "Cold" parenting has been a widespread issue in the West since at least the 1700s, probably earlier. The major factors driving the modern-day increase in autism diagnosis and autism severity has to be some combination of dietary, pharmaceutical, technological, and environmental factors.
Hans Asperger actually noted that autism seemed to present differently in females and that symptoms began to become more obvious later (e.g. in early adulthood as opposed to toddlerhood). Kanner's original study had 8 boys and 3 girls. One of the most famous autists of all time is a woman! (Temple Grandin). The diagnosis was never "solely" based on male examples; this is a social-media-driven myth; the kids don't know their own history.
Autism is associated with more gender nonconformity / androgyny in both sexes, and with an increased likelihood of identifying as LGBTQ+ in both sexes -- I link to an essay about "gifted" kids below that goes into this relationship a bit more.
There is significantly more evidence for the refrigerator mother theory than "Bettelheim said so". I elaborate more on the "cold" parenting factor in two other essays, if you're interested in reading more:
Thank you for this reply - I checked some sources and you're indeed right about Kanner etc. I think I agree with most of your other points.
I guess something else that can be an influence here is that different risk factors would likely come from different parents - feeding your kids the cheapest ultra-processed food, both parents working long hours and "play with this screen kid, I'm busy" are all things I'd associate with what we're politely supposed to call "low socio-economic status". Reading too much, tiger-mother parenting, WEIRDness, Baby Einstein DVDs - that's solidly middle-class I think, the kind of parents who have degrees and expect their kid to get one too? I think both of those approaches can be toxic in different ways.
My foundational article on this topic is here:
https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/trans-messaging-is-too-sophisticated
But Harris Coulter first proposed this theory in 1990:
https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/book-review-vaccination-social-violence
Thanks, Toby! I pinned your comment. As I tried to make clear here, I do think vaccines are part of the puzzle, I'm just not convinced they're the biggest piece. From what I can tell, the recipe for a vaccine injury is Tylenol use + poor dietary choices before and/or after vaccines + baby or toddler has high stress levels. (Possibly Vitamin D deficiency as well? Parents are told to keep their children out of the sun ... you see so many kids hidden away in covered strollers when they're outside). An important point here is that this can happen with very loving parents! Parents are TOLD to give their kids Tylenol (it's basically recommended every time I've interacted with a doctor or nurse regarding my kid being a little sick), healthcare workers recommend foods like Cheerios as a first food (I read somewhere that glyphosate might increase heavy metal accumulation?), sleep training is encouraged, as is, at least in the States, mothers going back to work as early as possible and putting the kid in daycare (higher stress levels, poorer detoxification). Once you notice it, it really starts to feel like we're living in a murder-suicide cult.
I agree that everything is multi-factor (and includes interactions between our genes and the environment). I strongly believe (based on 9 years of research) that vaccines player a bigger role than most people are comfortable admitting. And I 100% support LGBT equality. It's just that the sharp rise in trans prevalence appears to be from toxicants.
Yes, I understand :-) I feel similarly. And supporting the view that vaccines are playing a significant role, I suspect anything that disrupts right hemisphere brain development, especially in the first three years is largely involved ... this theoretically would include vaccines given from ages 0-3, and any vaccines given to mothers while pregnant. Theoretically, it would also mean there's a sensitive window from roughly ages 10/11-25. My issue is with the claim that they are the "primary" cause, especially when this claim is made based on correlational data that doesn't control for confounding factors.
MB, have you investigated vaccine ingredients? Scroll down to Appendix B, second page and more... https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/b/excipient-table-2.pdf
I'm aware! I've actually engaged with a lot of the anti-vax arguments. As I said above, it's not that I deny that vaccines are playing a role in the rise of various ailments etc but that I think it's very multifactorial and there are other causes as well, other toxins, poor diet, and social causes (e.g. parenting styles), all of which are interlinked in a way in that they drive right-hemisphere dysfunction and a disconnection from others, the embodied sense of self, and nature / spirit. I worry that that the hyper-focus on vaccines downplays the other major factors, in particular the social / cultural ones. As well, while I have little doubt that some vaccines cause more harm than good, I suspect there are still some where the pros of vaccination (preventing a serious illness) outweigh the potential harms -- or the harms can be mitigated / prevented by controlling for the other factors, which makes them important to study and consider. I think vaccines need to be studied more, and that any suppressed data on them needs to be released, but I don't like that they are being used as a scapegoat when there's clearly a lot more going on.
They are ALL bioweapons. And Dr. Andrew Moulden stated that every vaccine caused neurological damage--a "stroke" to the brain. He was working on a detox video when he was m*rdered.
That may be the case -- but my point is still relevant. Homosexuality, mental illness, autistic traits, and even transgenderism all predate the invention of vaccines, and other causes have been found in research and have been discusses anecdotally. Vaccines may be contributing, but they definitely are not the only cause and the evidence doesn't yet support them being the primary cause.
https://vactruth.com/2009/07/21/dr-andrew-moulden-interview-what-you-were-never-told-about-vaccines/
http://www.similia.lv/interesanti/viss-par-vakcinam-vakcinaciju/dr-andrew-moulden-every-vaccine-produces-microvascular-damage/
Well, you haven't lost me, Meghan. I think the more you write courageously from your own beliefs, the more your audience will find you. I have shared your "ideologically homeless, and frustrated" sentiment -- and still do, at times -- but am grateful for the unique community that has slowly built itself around my stack.
The sad truth is that extreme views and opinions are quicker to attract attention because people love to hate. Those of us who attempt to see more than one side are just not as sexy! :-)
Keep up the excellent work. And if you feel like, it, pop in to The Art of Freedom; you'll definitely find some kindred spirits there. xox
Great article.
HUH?
All I have to say.
I find it interesting how many factors can contribute to rising rates of autism and LGBTQ+ identification. It's not just vaccines but a mix of many things. 🤔 Excellent work, fantastic writing! 🌟
Thank you ... got another autism-related post coming out today!
I'll check it out
I am glad others noticed those substacks. I too commented on 2 of them. These identities are so clearly multifactorial but honestly I point to industry as by far the biggest factor. What we are seeing seems to be a well intentioned but with a "everything looks like a nail to a carpenter" kind of twist. Plus social contagions are weird - very weird. I don't deny an autism connection but there are far too many normal kids turning 'trans' suddenly that are not autistic and never had 'gender' issues until they discovered 'trans.' Naming a condition creates patients. Industry knows this. The behavior of 'being dysphoric' (teen girls love this term), taking on alternative names, dressing like the opposite sex, etc is contagious. Friend groups seek testosterone together, they take friends to their 'gender reveal' where their mutilated breasts are unwrapped, etc. They post on social media, they garner likes and clicks, some turn into influencers and get cuts from companies that sell binders, packers, etc...
You do not need vaccines to create a social contagion, you need a giant psychological operation. Also the autism industry seems to want to create trans kids for industry, is it autism that causes 'transgender' or the fact the sex reassignment industry exists at all? Remove the option, there will be no patients. This is what must happen. There are time tested ways to nurture youth in natural bodies of course.
To clarify the mushrooms comment, I mean in a ceremony setting with trained facilitators who know what they're doing, and with counselling before and after.
I agree that social contagion is playing a huge role, but I still think there's a bunch of stuff happening with brain-gut development and/or hormone levels to make this "social contagion" possible. Young people in distress look for a narrative to explain their distress, this one is provided, but the causes of the distress are multifactorial and probably to some degree unique in every case. I've noticed a significant relationship between processed food and refined sugar consumption and "queer" identities (but again that might be via the autism pathway).
I have mixed feelings about removing the option for sex reassignment. I had a friend growing up who was VERY gender nonconforming (like from when we were toddlers) not a "rapid-onset" case at all, and to my awareness this friend truly became happier after being able to transition as an adult. I think adults, at least, should have the option to pursue this if they wish, but they also deserve to be fully informed of the risks. I've been nosing around in history books and it's clear to me that there's always been a minority of people who are going to want to self-castrate or alter their sex in some way, to live as the other sex. There's evidence of transexual cults in the ancient days, dedicated to Inanna / Ishtar. I don't think banning outright is a good solution. (I have some controversial ideas, like "if someone wants to transition they should do a hero-dose of magic mushrooms first", since I think that would help filter out people for whom transition is not appropriate, plus the various healing powers of mushrooms would probably improve the odds of surgeries going well).
I appreciate the comments. Nature is amazing and although I only enjoy mushrooms in cuisine, I know some people who have had positive medicinal results. The only long term study that constantly gets referenced is one out of Sweden where an older cohort had an increased risk of suicide, suicide ideation, and shortened lives. It is very difficult to argue the benefits for a psychological condition with no markers IMO. It is all subjective which is not evidence at all. I know countless parents where indeed social contagion is an enormous factor. Few people understand social contagions because they are so weird and they lead people down all sorts of paths searching for answers. I have written about this in a piece on 'gender dysphoria.'
I think several things can be true at the same time! As I mentioned, I grew up with someone who was gender dysphoric from an extremely young age, well before there was a social contagion. People came up to us on the playground when we were like 7/8 and asked my friend if they were a boy or girl, and my friend would smile and say "Guess!" I'm worried the backlash against the social contagion aspect (which I think is largely a result of profit-driven motives on the part of Big Pharma, surgical equipment suppliers, and psychopathic surgeons, and of depopulation and eugenicist agendas) will hurt people who might actually benefit from access to sex-change drugs and surgeries (I say *might* because I'm not all-in on this argument, maybe if the world were more tolerant of gay people the surgeries wouldn't feel necessary; I also find the "Two Spirit" concept appealing, but it's worth noting that while the Indigenous history here has been muddled by colonialism etc and is difficult to ascertain, we can know for sure that no Indigenous Two Spirit person was being given hormones or getting surgeries prior to colonialism).
My understanding of the refrigerator mothers angle: there is a correlation, but the causality goes in the other direction.
We know for sure that emotionally neglecting or abusing children can cause all kinds of problems down the line. But I've also heard enough testimony from mothers who tried to do everything they thought right - some combination of become a stay-at-home mother, spend as much time with their babies as possible, breastfeed, home-cook meals, and hug their sweet child as much as possible.
And still, the children sometimes turned out autistic, and psychologists who blindly trusted "the experts" or "the science" diagnosed the autism and then turned on the mother accusing her of refrigerator-mothering, without bothering to observe how the mothers actually tried to interact with their child. The textbook said autism was caused by bad mothers, end of discussion.
I can't find the original source, but I know I read somewhere of a mother who said she'd had this dream before having her first child that she'd hug her child and it would be the most wonderful and fulfilling thing in the world. But the child, after growing out of infancy, screamed like it was being assaulted any time someone tried to hug it, so eventually the mother stopped trying. Of course, the child was diagnosed with autism, the mother was asked a bunch of questions like "how often do you hug your child", answered truthfully "not at all - he hates it" and was promptly put down for refrigerator-mothering. So yes, there's a correlation here between "autistic child" and "mother doesn't hug" - but the causality is in the other direction because some autistic children really hate being touched by other humans. The same goes for other observations - if your child doesn't react at all, or starts screaming and crying when you make funny faces at it, as a mother you will quite soon stop doing that, and then some well-meaning observer armed with a textbook on child development will note down "mother doesn't interact with baby in a normal way".
When the vaccines theory came out, it was a huge relief to many mothers, because if the cause of autism is vaccines then it's not their fault for being bad mothers, and would the very doctors who convinced them to vaccinate their kids please stop blaming it on them!
As far as I understand, the vaccines theory is held debunked because all the data in the studies making this claim was somewhere between really low quality, and completely fabricated. That doesn't mean that some new study couldn't prove a link if there is one, but I don't think anyone has done such a study. There's also a possible negative indicator in that after the vaccine theory came out, vaccination rates in children dropped as parents were (understandably) more reluctant to vaccinate their children - but this did not, as far as I know, lead to any measurable decline in rates of autism diagnoses.
The refrigerator mothers theory never seems to have had much solid evidence in its favor in the first place, beyond "Bruno Bettelheim said so and he's an expert so it's probably correct" - as far as I know there's no serious work that established any causation, beyond pure observation studies (which as I said above, can be hugely flawed).
The autism-LGBTQ+ (and especially the autism-trans/queer) links definitely seem real to me though. I mean, it's practically a meme in autism circles that if you put "autistic non-binary" in your profile online somewhere, someone will joke "you said the same thing twice". What's interesting to me here is that autism diagnoses always used to skew something like 4:1 biological male:female, and there was a lot of talk of whether we're missing all the autistic girls because the diagnosis was based solely on male examples. But I think trans, and especially non-binary, in Gen Z skews heavily biologically female, with diagnoses of autism and gender dysphoria often coming up together. Maybe we found the missing autistic girls? It would even make sense from a certain perspective, that if autism expresses itself as finding social norms harder to follow (or being completely oblivious to them) then you'd have a lot of trouble performing society's expectations of femininity, so you're much more likely to pick the one "opt out" route that modern society offers?
I don't think there are many people out there who still believe that all autism cases can be attributed to "refrigerator" mothering / parenting; too many other correlational links and potential causes have been identified. However, I do think that cold / neglectful / abusive parenting can contribute to the development of autism (in combination with other risk factors) or result in a child who would have been autistic no matter what having more severe symptoms.
It gets complicated because the other risk factors would be positively correlated with "cold" parenting. For example, a diet high in highly-processed convenience foods increases autism risk, but parents who are more neglectful and/or busy and/or food insecure are more likely to feed their kids such foods. Chronic stress -- say from being neglected or mistreated as a small child -- impairs the immune system and detoxification, leaving the child more vulnerable to illnesses, infections, and pharmaceutical injuries / adverse events which may contribute to autism. Genes that increase the risk of autism in a child (e.g. MTHFR mutations) would also increase the likelihood of autistic traits, mental illness, and physical illness in the parent(s) who passed them on, which in turn would increase the risk of "colder" parenting. Social isolation and excess screen time increase autism risk -- but again, which kid(s) would this disproportionately apply to?
Narcissistic parenting is a risk factor for autism and a wide range of other struggles in children. One of the issues with studying this -- or with trying to help these children -- is the nature of narcissism; most narcissists know how to put on a good show when they need to. The abuse, neglect, and manipulation they inflict is hidden. Narcissists also are very unlikely to take responsibility, and respond with anger ("narcissistic rage") when confronted.
However, autism is not a singular condition, but an umbrella diagnosis, and it can be caused by factors completely unrelated to parental warmth. I really have no idea what the breakdown is, but if I had to guess, "cold" parenting is less likely to be the dominant factor today than 50+ years ago. "Cold" parenting has been a widespread issue in the West since at least the 1700s, probably earlier. The major factors driving the modern-day increase in autism diagnosis and autism severity has to be some combination of dietary, pharmaceutical, technological, and environmental factors.
Hans Asperger actually noted that autism seemed to present differently in females and that symptoms began to become more obvious later (e.g. in early adulthood as opposed to toddlerhood). Kanner's original study had 8 boys and 3 girls. One of the most famous autists of all time is a woman! (Temple Grandin). The diagnosis was never "solely" based on male examples; this is a social-media-driven myth; the kids don't know their own history.
Autism is associated with more gender nonconformity / androgyny in both sexes, and with an increased likelihood of identifying as LGBTQ+ in both sexes -- I link to an essay about "gifted" kids below that goes into this relationship a bit more.
There is significantly more evidence for the refrigerator mother theory than "Bettelheim said so". I elaborate more on the "cold" parenting factor in two other essays, if you're interested in reading more:
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/the-dangers-of-reading-too-much-part-df8
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/the-drama-of-the-gifted-children
Thank you for this reply - I checked some sources and you're indeed right about Kanner etc. I think I agree with most of your other points.
I guess something else that can be an influence here is that different risk factors would likely come from different parents - feeding your kids the cheapest ultra-processed food, both parents working long hours and "play with this screen kid, I'm busy" are all things I'd associate with what we're politely supposed to call "low socio-economic status". Reading too much, tiger-mother parenting, WEIRDness, Baby Einstein DVDs - that's solidly middle-class I think, the kind of parents who have degrees and expect their kid to get one too? I think both of those approaches can be toxic in different ways.
Yes -- there's a lot of different cohorts. Upper-middle-class more than middle class for WEIRDness and tiger-momming etc. There's a lot to untangle!