The term "refrigerator mother" refers to mothers of autistic children. It is based on the theory that autism is caused or aggravated by mothers who are too "cold" or reserved toward young children, which causes the child to withdraw because he or she senses a lack of affection.

Most sources name University of Chicago psychoanalyst Bruno Bettleheim as the person who coined the term "refrigerator mother," but the concept it describes was already a part of the literature on autism before Bettleheim began his work. In 1943, Austrian psychiatrist Leo Kanner wrote that there appeared to be "a genuine lack of maternal warmth" in the relationships between children with autism and their parents. For example, he noticed that several fathers of autistic children rarely got down on the floor to play with their children, and he described many of the children's mothers as being "cold" and "obsessive," leaving their children "neatly in refrigerators which did not defrost."

In 1964, psychologist Bernard Rimlaud published a book on infantile autism that attacked the "refrigerator mother" theory. Rimlaud argued that the behavior of the parents did not cause autism, but rather that autism was based in the wiring of the brain itself. Researchers after Rimlaud soon began to discover that his arguments had merit, and the "refrigerator mother" theory began to fall by the wayside. (Rimlaud, who had an autistic son himself, went on to become director of the Autism Research Institute.)

Today, the "refrigerator mother" concept is no longer considered legitimate. Researchers still don't know what causes autism, but they now focus on neurological and genetic factors, and are more likely to help parents work with their autistic children than to blame parents for somehow "causing" their child's brain to be wired differently.

The term refrigerator mother was coined around 1950 as a label for mothers of children diagnosed with autism or schizophrenia. These mothers were often blamed for their children's atypical behavior, which included rigid rituals, speech difficulty, and self-isolation.

The "refrigerator mother" label was based on the assumption that autistic behaviors stem from the emotional frigidity of the children's mothers. As a result, mothers of some children on the autistic spectrum suffered from blame, guilt, and self-doubt from the 1950s throughout the 1970s and beyondneeded: when the prevailing medical belief that autism resulted from inadequate parenting was widely assumed to be correct. Some present-day proponents of the psychogenic theory of autism continue to maintain that the condition is a result of poor parenting. However, others merely point out that some conditions are perhaps psychological in origin rather than physiological, and that this is not necessarily a reflection on parenting skills.

I am the mother of a child with autism and I can tell you the term "refrigerator mother" does not apply to me. I am a stay-at-home mom and advocate of attachment parenting. I spent every waking minute of my child's day stimulating him and bonding with him. He did and still does sleep in bed with myself and my husband. I provided as much love, care and support as I could to my child since the day he was born.

There is now a new debate that mothers with depression tend to have children with autism at a higher prevalence than mothers without depression. The bottom line is that right now, there is no known cause for autism other than Fragile X syndrome, which can be genetically tested for.