The article I chose this week was Blaming Mothers: A disability perspective. By Ruth Colker

In too many school districts, if a child has a disability, the mother is blamed for whatever difficulties occur. Most often, she is considered overly aggressive in advocating for her child or negligent for failing to do enough.

I chose this article mainly because I work in an elementary school with many special ed and behavioral children and a mother. I hear comments before and after meetings. When I have to attend IEP meetings for my students we see all kinds of parents, some that are more involved in their child's medical and education and then we have others that don't seem to care or maybe just don't understand This article gave good examples of different school situations with mothers wanting to get the right and appropriate care/education. 

According to the article, blaming the mother is a long-standing cultural tradition in the United States. Leo Kanner, the researcher credited with identifying autism as a specific neurological disorder in 1943, blamed it on “refrigerator mothers,” a term popularized by University of Chicago researcher Bruno Bettelheim, who drew parallels between these mothers and guards in Germany’s concentration camps. The "refrigerator mother" theory had a significant impact on mothers of autistic children. They were often blamed for their child's condition and were made to feel guilty and ashamed, even though they had done nothing wrong. Dorothy Roberts has documented the stereotyping of the mothers of so-called “crack babies,” even though medical research has failed to substantiate any such condition, syndrome, or disorder. Susan Okie calls it “the epidemic that wasn’t,” because cocaine’s effects on a fetus “are less severe than those of alcohol and are comparable to those of tobacco.” Race and wealth play a part as well, due to a woman being poor her baby has a low birth weight. 

There are 5 different examples of blaming mothers

Blame mother for incompetence

Blame  mother for being to assertive

Blame mother for being to passive

Blame mother for working outside the home

No easy solutions

The one I found pretty interesting was Blaming mother for incompetence. They gave an example of a mother that had a child that was deaf at 18 months old.  He had hearing aids by the time he was two, when he was 4 the school district determined he was eligible for special education for hearing impaired and speech. When he was 10 he received a cochlear implant but wasn't able to use it properly.  His communication skills was under 2 and his primary way to communicate was sign language. When he was  12 years old, his mother, Nancy Jimenez, requested that the school district  send her son  to a school for the deaf so he could be more thoroughly immersed in ASL (american sign language) and begin to make adequate educational progress. The school district refused the request and blamed his parents for his lack of progress. His mother was criticized for her son not receiving a cochlear implant til he was 11. This continued for 2 years with no progress. She found a lawyer, David Grey, to help her file a due process complaint on behalf of her son before an administrative law judge (ALJ). The judge held six days of hearings and rendered a decision two months later entirely in favor of the school district.  Her attorney Mr Grey appealed and won when he was 16. The judge found that the school had completely ignored the highly credible testimony of His Mother about the substantial language difficulties that he faced at school. He could not understand  an insult when another child called him a “stupid dork.” The school district’s “blame the mother” strategy ultimately failed, her son won unfortunately it took four years so according to the article he was the loser in this situation. The part of the article most interesting: is how long it took this mother to get the proper education this boy needed. The article was titled Blame Mother for Incompetence, nothing in this article shows she was incompetent. The school was incompetent and failed this family and student.

I started with this article and became interested in what is a refrigerator mom, I never heard of it before. So I looked into what is a refrigerator mom was. I found a video with a good understanding of what a refrigerator mom is. The documentary it is a little long but very interesting and sad to see how these parents were blamed for their child's autism The stories in the video are heartbreaking for these parents, some were told their child couldn't have autism because they're not white and educated. They recommended the child not to grow up with their families. The video shows very strong, dedicated mothers.