Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, has intimated that parents are to blame for their children’sautism, and that they are responsible for researching every aspect of their children’s lives that could affect their development.
“We have to recognize we are doing this to our children, and we need to put an end to it,” Kennedy said at his firstpress conferenceas health secretary.
In a recentinterviewwith Dr Phil McGraw, Kennedy told parents to “do their own research” when it comes to vaccinating their kids, stating that scientists are still trying to understand whether themeasles, mumps and rubellavaccine causes severe side effects like brain swelling (they know; it doesn’t).
“You research the baby stroller, you research the foods that they’re getting, and you need to research the medicines that they’re taking as well,” he said.
These statements appear to blame parents for vaccinating their kids and causing autism, a developmental and neurological condition that is overwhelmingly genetic, said Jessica Calarco, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author ofHolding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.
“That’s very much what he’s implying and how it’s going to be read,” Calarco said.
It’s a message that reminded Shannon Des Roches Rosa of the early days after her son’s diagnosis. In 2003, she subscribed to the then novel theory that vaccines could be linked to autism – to the point that she stopped vaccinating her children.
She saw a doctor who specialized in treating autistic children, and he “had us doing all this pseudoscience and supplements and not vaccinating our kids”, Rosa said.
“People were thinking we were having an autism epidemic when we weren’t. It was diagnosis and recognition,” she said.
As study after study came out showing no link between vaccines and autism, Rosa began getting her kids regular shots once again.
“There is no association between vaccines and autism. As much as any science can be settled, that is settled,” said Rosa, a senior editor of Thinking Person’s Guide toAutism– and by re-litigating this point, Kennedy “is causing incredible harm,” she said.
“I don’t think parents blame themselves automatically. I think they blame themselves when they hear from people who stoke their fears about autism, like RFK Jr.”
Parents, especially mothers, have long been blamed for their children’s autism diagnoses. In the 1940s, psychologists believed the condition was caused by “refrigerator mothers”, or moms who were too “cold” to their children.
“There was a huge culture of blame and shame toward mothers,” Calarco said.
That’s one of the reasons the debunked vaccination explanation for autism has been so appealing and persistent, she said. “Despite the clear evidence against it, it alleviates that blame.”
In his efforts to link vaccines to autism, Kennedy also opens the door for legal action against vaccine makers, Calarco said.
“If they can point to the vaccine, it means that they can legally hold someone else liable, and thereby sue to get financial support for the often high costs of supporting their children in a society that doesn’t have a strong social safety net.”
That lack of a social safety net is one reason why Kennedy has been popular among some parents of autistic children.
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For instance, families of disabled children were nearly twice as likely to face financial hardship than families of children without disabilities, according to a newstudy.
“We put so much burden on families, and particularly on mothers, to navigate their children’s diagnoses, to navigate the supports that their children need,” Calarco said. “In that kind of system, it’s easy to want any kind of support and attention, even if that means accepting misinformation.”
Blaming mothers has persisted through the decades in part because “mothers are overwhelmingly the ones who make healthcare decisions for their families”, Calarco said. “If you’re telling parents or telling society that someone should be doing this work of keeping kids safe, what you’re really saying is women should be doing this work, especially mothers.”
This message also reinforces ideals of intensive mothering, especially stay-at-home mothering, Calarco said. “RFK Jr is weaponizing the supermom myth – the false idea that moms are the only ones who can keep kids safe from harm.”
Rosa pushed back on Kennedy’s recommendation that parents do research on vaccines.
“I shouldn’t have to be doing that. That’s what researchers do, and researchers have already settled this question. I cannot tell you how distressing it is to have seen all these years of research go into autism and vaccine causation that could have been used to research better quality of life for my son,” she said.
Some parents, believing they are responsible for the diagnosis and for finding relief, also try unproven and dangerous “treatments” for autism. Chelation, for instance, is a process used to reverse heavy-metal poisoning that can cause heart attacks and deaths if not overseen carefully. A five-year-old childdiedin a hyperbaric chamber in January while undergoing “oxygen therapy”. And other parents have given their children enemas with industrial bleach on the advice of discredited pseudoscientists.
“It’s not enough to let people know that vaccines don’t cause autism. We also have to affirm that autism is not something to fear,”Rosa has written.
“If they got affirming and neutral information about autism from the start, if our society wasn’t so fearful of autism from the start – obviously every kind of disability is different, but it would just be like, ‘Oh, my kid needs glasses,’” she said.
“Disability is a natural part of human variation, even though it’s so badly stigmatized, so what we need to work on is developing better supports for people like my son,” Rosa continued.
Health leaders such as Kennedy “need to focus on helping people live good lives, instead of trying to prevent them from existing”, she said.