Refrigerator Moms

Kelley Jensen 00:00
We named our show after an insult. Find out why today on Refrigerator Moms.
Kelley Jensen 00:11
Kelley here today, talking refrigerator mother theory. We have had a lot of comments about our name and love it or hate it, most people have been like, oh, I love it. You got a lot of love for the day. We definitely do. And some people get it. Some people find it wildly offensive. We actually had that. Wildly offensive. And people. People want to know why we would choose such a name that has such a horribly fraught history. So. Well, we thought we'd kind of elaborate on what our thought process was and why we love the name.
Julianna Scott 00:42
Yeah. Because a lot of people who love it, actually, sometimes they don't get it at first because they haven't heard of the refrigerator mother theory. And some who do immediately tend to like it.
Kelley Jensen 00:53
Yes. Yes.
Julianna Scott 00:54
Because they think it is irreverent. And it's. It goes back to something so ridiculous as the refrigerator mother theory.
Kelley Jensen 01:00
It's a giant middle finger.
Julianna Scott 01:01
Yeah. Yeah. And the refrigerator mother theory, in a nutshell. It's. Doctors told mothers that they'd caused their children's autism by being cold. It feels like it should be ancient history, but what we're gonna talk a little bit about today is also. It's not so ancient. I mean, parental blame is still alive and well in our community.
Kelley Jensen 01:25
Yes.
Julianna Scott 01:25
So we are gonna talk about a little bit that blame started and why it never fully went away.
This episode of the Refrigerator Moms is brought to you by Brain Performance Technologies. Brain Performance Technologies is a specialty mental health clinic that offers magnetic E resonance therapy, or MeRT, for autistic people aged 3 or older. MeRT is a transcranial magnetic stimulation protocol that utilizes an EEG diagnostic to deliver personalized magnetic pulses to stimulate the brain and build neural pathways effective in managing autistic symptoms.
Kelley Jensen 02:03
All right, so you found an article from Time magazine. What year was this article?
Julianna Scott 02:03
Okay, this was interesting. So Leo Kanner, back in 1943, his description of autism noted the lack of warmth in some parents. And the refrigerator mother, or the refrigerator image came a little bit later. So Time magazine ran an article titled Frosted Children. And this was 1948, and there was a line about children being stored in a refrigerator that was not defrosted. So I thought it would be fun to read a little bit of this 1948 article.
Kelley Jensen 02:35
Okay,
Julianna Scott 02:37
so you haven't read this. I'm gonna give you the. This is first time for you. Okay, so from this Time article, how did they get that way? This is talking about autistic children. How did they become autistic. Dr. Kanner took a hard look at their parents. At first glance, the parents too, seemed fine. They were just the kind of people who birth controllers say ought to have more children. Which right there is kind of.
Kelley Jensen 03:04
What is a birth controller?
Julianna Scott 03:06
I don't know. I mean, somebody who's like, thinks who should have kids.
Kelley Jensen 03:11
Oh, I see. I
Julianna Scott 03:12
don't know. Was
Kelley Jensen 03:13
that a thing back then?
Julianna Scott 03:14
I don't know. I didn't
Kelley Jensen 03:15
do the deep dive. You think I
Julianna Scott 03:16
would do the deep dive? But
Kelley Jensen 03:18
only a time reader would know who a birth controller is. Ought to have more children. Except in one case, there was no known insanity in the families. The fathers were scientists, college professors, artists, clergymen, business executives, psychologists, psychiatrists. But all five of the mothers had gone to college. But all but one had been active before or after marriage as scientists, laboratory technicians, physicians, nurses, librarians, artists. And then. Yeah. So right now they're calling out interesting. The mothers were well educated.
Julianna Scott 03:52
Too smart. Yeah, too smart for their own good.
Kelley Jensen 03:54
Right? Or maybe they were just a little too interested in their own things and not about mothering. So then the next thing is cold perfectionist. But there was something wrong with all of them. They showed a mechanization of human relationships, describe themselves and their spouses as undemonstrative. There was. Dr. Kanner found no glamour of romance in premarital courtship, no impetuousness in post nuptial mating. Can you imagine going through, like, being interviewed by Dr. Kanner and in 1948.
Julianna Scott 04:28
Right.
Kelley Jensen 04:30
And telling him, like, having this guy ask you about,
Julianna Scott 04:34
do you get your freak on?
Kelley Jensen 04:36
Or like, what was your courtship like?
Julianna Scott 04:38
Whatever.
Kelley Jensen 04:39
Not glamorous with the romance.
Julianna Scott 04:41
Oh, my God. Do you put lipstick on before bed? Probably,
Kelley Jensen 04:44
right? Oh, my God.
Julianna Scott 04:45
Right, Right.
Kelley Jensen 04:47
He saw only one mother hug her child warmly and bring her face close to his. Many of the busy fathers hardly knew their children.
Julianna Scott 04:54
Well, that couldn't possibly have been unique to the fathers in 1948.
Kelley Jensen 05:01
The parents wanted to do the right thing by them, but their idea of the right thing was the mechanized service of the kind which is rendered by an over conscientious gasoline station attendant.
Julianna Scott 05:13
Over conscientious gasoline.
Kelley Jensen 05:16
I know. Unpack that.
Julianna Scott 05:17
Well, I mean, I fair. That might describe me. An over conscientious gasoline station attendant. Fair.
Kelley Jensen 05:24
The children, says Dr. Kanner, were kept neatly in a refrigerator which didn't defrost. Were the cold parents freezing their children into schizophrenia?
Julianna Scott 05:33
Wow.
Kelley Jensen 05:33
Dr. Kanner did not say yes or no, but he has found no case of infantile autism among children of unsophisticated parents.
Julianna Scott 05:41
Wow.
Kelley Jensen 05:42
Said he of his pathetic patients. This is in the time where I wrote pathetic patients. Their withdrawal seems to be an act of turning away to seek comfort in solitude.
Julianna Scott 05:52
Unbelievable.
Kelley Jensen 05:53
I know. It just gave me a little chills, actually.
Julianna Scott 05:54
Wow, that is crazy. Unsophisticated parents.
Kelley Jensen 05:57
Yes. Yes. So that was kind of. I mean, what do you think of that? This is what the general Time reader is reading about autism, infantile autism.
Julianna Scott 06:06
So you have to remember that back in 1948, not all children went to school. So you've got a kid that is not speaking. You're trying to get help for your kid. Your neighbors are looking at you weird anyway, because there's something insane, the word insanity popping up in the article. And they read Time article and I mean, you have to close those blinds, Right? You are scared to leave the house. I mean, the shame that comes with this being generally accepted in mainstream media.
Kelley Jensen 06:36
To piggyback on that. So then we go to Bruno Bettelheim, and he ran. And we talk about this. We've got an episode, our first episode is all about blame, shame and the guilt game. And we talk about this history in more detail. And we mentioned Bruno Bettelheim. Yes. We've got a paper for those of you who are watching us on YouTube. You can see our paper here. And you can download this on refrigeratormoms.com, it's got some good stuff about how to treat yourself a little nicer.
Julianna Scott 07:03
Yeah. And the background
Kelley Jensen 07:04
and the background of all of this and how we do come by this legacy of shame, honestly. So Bruno Bettelheim ran the University of Chicago's Orthogenic School, and he published the empty fortress in 1967. But he was hired in 44 and advocated for the parentectomy, which means separating children from parents. And he is also the one who. He had been in World War II. He'd been in a concentration camp. And so he comes home from World War II and says that he compared mothers to the commandants in the Nazi concentration camps.
Julianna Scott 07:41
Wow.
Kelley Jensen 07:42
So that's great. So most of Kanner's patients, mothers had gone to college. And experts later noted that mothers with careers or degrees were singled out. So I think that's interesting in this timeframe, too.
Julianna Scott 07:55
Just maybe as a further excuse not to fund college for women. Right. Because you don't want to be too smart.
Kelley Jensen 08:02
Clearly, they're looking at mothers who are choosing to become educated or have a career as turning away from their duties as a mother.
Julianna Scott 08:12
Yes.
Kelley Jensen 08:12
And that is causing your children's autism. So if you're a working mom, you're not prioritizing your children and that's going to cause them to withdraw.
Julianna Scott 08:21
The reality of life for these mothers was that they were really just trying to get help for their kids.
Kelley Jensen 08:27
Absolutely. And that's, I mean that's, that's the sick irony. But so obviously the harm from all this back even then is shame, guilt, separation, the social stigma, like you said, drawing the curtains and years of
Julianna Scott 08:42
isolation,
Kelley Jensen 08:43
isolation and all that. So the end of that era was really 1964. They're turned toward a biological explanation.
Julianna Scott 08:53
And so 1964, but that just kind of started, but it took a long time.
Kelley Jensen 08:58
Yeah, no, the damage had been done. So this is another little fun fact that I came across. This go round was in 1969. So parents fed up, parents from this, you know, who had inherited this legacy of the refrigerator mother theory. They organized into the National Society for Autistic Children, now the Autism Society. And at their first annual general meeting, Leo Kanner is the keynote speaker. And from his speech, he says, from the very first publication until the last, I spoke of this condition in no uncertain terms as innate. So he's kind of
Julianna Scott 09:31
backtracking there.
Kelley Jensen 09:32
Yeah, but because I described some of the characteristics of the parents as persons, I was misquoted often as having said that it is all the parents fault. And then he says, herewith I especially acquit you people as parents. And I mean,
Julianna Scott 09:50
1969, did that make it into Time magazine?
Kelley Jensen 09:53
I don't know, but
Julianna Scott 09:54
probably not.
Kelley Jensen 09:55
Apparently this got a huge reaction from all the parents in the audience. And they were crying and clapping and just feel like the weight was
Julianna Scott 10:06
that
Kelley Jensen 10:06
head. I would be like, oh, are you kidding me? Like you can't do all this damage and then just say, oh, you know, I was taken out of context and all this stuff. I mean, these are all these parents who are, who had felt the weight of this lift because he said, okay, you know, actually you're off the hook.
Julianna Scott 10:23
Right.
Kelley Jensen 10:24
But the damage obviously had been done.
Julianna Scott 10:26
Are you taking care of your brain? You've tried medication, you've gone to therapy, but has anyone talked to you about brain care? It is the mental health treatment no one has told you about. At Brain Performance Technologies, we help with depression, PTSD, autism and many other mental health conditions. Our treatments are drug free and non invasive. Reach out to us about insurance options. BrainPerformanceTechnologies.com, well, and we equate some of it. It's just transferred from it's not your fault because you were cold to. Now it's your fault because you vaccinated,
Kelley Jensen 11:00
or
Julianna Scott 11:00
now it's your fault because you have been feeding them gluten or casein. And it's your fault because of the choices that you've made.
Kelley Jensen 11:08
Absolutely.
Julianna Scott 11:09
And so really, the legacy of it lives on. And we really felt like, as a parent, not refrigerator mom or refrigerator dad, as a parent of an autistic child, there is little resources. There is little explanation. And you are trying to raise a child and trying to intervene and get help as best as you can. And so much disinformation is coming at you that you have to be very sharp and analytical. And does this make sense? Is this possible? Could I have done something different? You're constantly pruning information from all sides.
Kelley Jensen 11:45
Yeah. And I think it's really easy to. Because we set ourselves up as moms for all our children, not just the ones with the special needs. Is that, am I doing all I can? Am I giving them enough attention? We've got the glass child syndrome. We have all these things. Are we doing enough for our children? So it's really easy to blame ourselves first. And when you have all of these external things, so it's already coming from within, and then you have all these external forces telling you that it's your choice to vaccinate your children, it's your choice that you're taking Tylenol during your pregnancy, the most recent one, or that you're trying too hard, like the warrior mom thing. So that comes up, and it's just like, moms don't catch a break. Because even if you're in that warrior mom ethos, it's like, well, you think you can cure your kid, and then you're blamed for that.
Kelley Jensen 12:40
Or
Julianna Scott 12:40
sometimes you don't have enough boundaries. You're trying to do this, and you have to just be firm, and you have to be firm with them.
Kelley Jensen 12:47
Right? And I mean. And we say that, you know, I mean, it's no surprise, like, we've talked a lot about PDA and all that stuff. And I can see. And I think that when. And it did come from the PDA world that this was offensive. And I think that people in that space get blamed a lot because I'm sure they feel the pressure of people criticizing them for what they're doing or not doing
Julianna Scott 13:11
well.
Kelley Jensen 13:11
And so
Julianna Scott 13:12
we just want to stop and say right now that our synopsis is that PDA parenting is just autism parenting. And they're just doing the same accommodations that we all do.
Kelley Jensen 13:22
We're all in the same boat. But I can see where in that corner of the autism world, they might feel singled
Julianna Scott 13:31
out.
Kelley Jensen 13:32
And that is not what we want to do. What we're trying to do is bridge the gap and saying we're actually doing really similar things. We're all looking at the same symptoms. Like we talked in another episode, it's like, I'm sure had the PDA profile existed, I would look at that and say, oh, you know, my son fits that criteria. You know, he wants to rule the roost in every which way. And so, you know, we're not here to vilify and nobody needs more of that.
Julianna Scott 14:01
No.
Kelley Jensen 14:02
And, you know, that's why this really matters, is that, you know, we need to be. Give ourselves that grace and not put that. Not absorb that guilt and shame.
Julianna Scott 14:16
Well, and then also we decided, I mean, we knew that this is a name that carries a lot of weight, and we also knew that it was a name a lot of people had never heard of because so many people haven't heard of. And we felt that people should know that this is where it came from. People should know this. Yes. A giant middle finger. Irreverence and homage. Homage to these first autism advocates. Because that's what these parents were. They were the first autism advocates.
Kelley Jensen 14:42
It came about because it had become a joke in my household, you know, calling me, you know, when I was being tough about something, that I was a refrigerator mom. But, you know, that's the thing. It's just like, because of its absurdity.
Julianna Scott 14:56
Right.
Kelley Jensen 14:57
And we are in no way shaming those mothers or bringing or trying to bring up something painful. It's really like, look what we've had to go through. We've always had to be strong in the
Julianna Scott 15:10
world. There's always gonna be something.
Kelley Jensen 15:12
Yeah, exactly. And I don't know, the best advice is kind of put the blinders on to a lot of that and just focus on your family. You are doing the best you can.
Julianna Scott 15:21
You're weighing information, you're weighing off label treatments. You're weighing whether this scientific theory makes any sense. And everybody's constantly trying to market to you about how they can help your kid and what makes sense. It does take some nerves of steel.
Kelley Jensen 15:36
It does.
Julianna Scott 15:38
It takes a cold, hard constitution.
Kelley Jensen 15:40
And again, I'm going to plug our paper because we do have to do lists on how to manage if you're feeling in the shame spiral or anything like that. I mean, we've got some good tips and ideas about what we would do in certain situations if we're feeling that pressure. So we wanted to do that as our first episode, partly to explain sort of our name and where that comes from, but also to stress that, yeah, we all feel it.
Julianna Scott 16:12
Yes.
Kelley Jensen 16:13
And even on our worst day, we're gonna say, have I done enough? What else could I have done? What's left to be done? And it largely falls on us to do that. And that's a huge responsibility. And, you know, be gentle with yourself.
Julianna Scott 16:33
That's right. And if you're one of the folks that has reached out and told us why you love the name and how it's empowering and how you get the.
Kelley Jensen 16:42
Or just fun.
Julianna Scott 16:43
Or just fun. Or
Kelley Jensen 16:43
just fun.
Julianna Scott 16:44
And you just love the imagery of it all. Thank you. We appreciate that. And keep tuning in and keep listening.
Kelley Jensen 16:53
Yeah. So go to refrigeratormoms.com and go follow us on YouTube and do all of those
Julianna Scott 17:00
things.
Kelley Jensen 17:00
TikTok,
Julianna Scott 17:02
all of the talking, whatever it is.
Kelley Jensen 17:04
Yeah. We're here for you.
Julianna Scott 17:05
Thanks.
Kelley Jensen 17:06
Thank you for listening to this episode of Refrigerator Moms. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe. So you never miss an episode and share it with someone who might need it. When an episode has a companion paper, you'll find it with citations, sources and additional notes at refrigeratormoms.com. We'd love to hear your questions and future episode ideas, so reach out on social media at Refrigerator Moms or through our website.
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