Why Is Everything Mom’s Fault?

It’s a pattern so ingrained in our culture that we often don’t notice it. When something goes wrong with a child’s health or behavior — we blame the mother.

For decades, the burden of caring for children with disabilities has been quietly, and often cruelly, placed on the backs of moms. We’ve baked mom blame into our medical systems, our public policies, and even the way we talk about childhood disability and poverty, and in doing so we’ve unfairly yoked moms with both an impossible task and the guilt of failing to meet an impossible standard.

The tendency to blame mom took off around the end of the 19th century with the rise of the middle class. The new middle class was suddenly confronted with an unpleasant disparity between what was considered essential for their children (education, protection, and nurturing) and what was happening with those living in urban poverty.

A new movement arose to “save” the children—the beggars, people with disabilities, and the delinquent. While initial efforts focused on addressing the challenges through education, medical care, and welfare organizations, the focus quickly shifted to identifying the root causes.

From there, the focus turned inward toward the family and specifically the mother. No longer did the affluent need to feel burdened by the suffering of children when they could instead focus on the ways the parent had failed them. Poverty, immorality, and crime could all be remedied by better parenting. Instead of looking at systemic issues like lack of access to sanitation, food, healthcare, safe housing, or education) the focus turned inward, toward the family.

Autism in particular has a dark history of mom blaming. This trend was especially clear in early psychology. In the mid-20th century, influential theories suggested that autism was caused by "refrigerator mothers" — cold, unloving women who failed to bond with their children. This idea, now thoroughly debunked, caused incalculable harm. It shifted attention away from research, services, and understanding — and placed it squarely on mothers' shoulders.

Sadly, this pattern continues today.

While the role of parents is important and weighty, we know from good research that children do not need perfect parents, merely good enough. The road to good enough parenting is wide. But that’s not how society at large portrays the role.

Instead, we present motherhood as an ideal to be achieved. From how a mother eats during pregnancy to how she responds to her child’s tantrums in public, there is constant scrutiny. We’ve made even basic aspects of pregnancy like eating a meal feel like a minefield. There’s no end to the “don’ts,” no grace for the complexity of navigating a world where the risks are complicated and nuanced. There is no recognition that science doesn’t always have clear answers.

Worse still, we under-research women's health — especially during pregnancy — out of fear it might affect the unborn child. But then, when we don’t have answers because we didn’t do the research, we turn that uncertainty into further judgment by questioning the choices moms make in a vacuum of evidence. It’s a vicious cycle that leaves moms with less support, fewer options, and more blame.

When a child requires extra care, society often asks: What did the mother do wrong? instead of asking: What support does this family need? That’s not only unjust; it’s inhumane.

When services fall short, when therapists are out of reach, when schools are underfunded, when healthcare is denied, who picks up the slack? Too often, it’s mothers.

We expect moms of children with disabilities to become experts in speech therapy, nutrition, behavioral intervention, advocacy, and more, and still, we blame them if progress is slow.

Autism is an excellent example, because it is parent advocacy and parent-researchers that ultimately debunked the parenting myth and led to better evidence on how to support their children. Even after this change, we still see stealthier mom blaming in the form of expectations for ameliorating a diagnosis.

The implication remains one of mom-blame. If a child becomes an adult who needs support, mom has failed to save them. Mothers are expected to single-handedly and selflessly conquer any developmental challenges. They are bombarded with messages to do everything including special diets, targeted schools, supplements, medications, therapeutic toys, and a full-time job’s worth of therapies as if “normalcy” is the only goal.

Even when there’s no clear evidence for a certain approach or intervention, we tell moms to “try everything, just in case.” Some of this pressure comes from other well-meaning parents. Perversely, moms subconsciously collude with the lie because believing in the fantasy of the all-powerful mother gives us the power to ensure that the world is safe for our children to grow up in.

The result is burnout, guilt, and the persistent fear that if they don’t do everything, they are failing their child.

This idea that mothers can and should save their children is directly harmful to autistic people and their parents. This feeds into the false narrative that being an autistic adult is somehow shameful or a fate worth suffering to avoid. Worse, it acts as a sort of absolution. Society washes its hands of responsibility to fight for inclusion, services, and support for autistic people and their families.

This is why recent campaigns suggesting a potential link between common medications like Tylenol and autism is not only not supported by available data — it’s harmful. Without solid evidence, these stories amplify fear and reinforce a damaging narrative: that if your child is different, it must be your fault.

Lurking below the surface is another favorite lie of misogyny, women should suffer for their families. Women and families are not purified or healed by suffering. There is strong evidence that high fever in pregnancy is dangerous for both mom and fetus. There is no victory for moms who forego adequate medication. We’re setting up a new catch-22 where moms can be blamed whatever they decide.

At the heart of this issue is a simple truth: blaming moms is a way to avoid taking responsibility as a society. If we can say it was “something the mother did,” then we don’t have to fix underfunded schools, inaccessible healthcare, or toxic environments. We don’t have to invest in real, systemic solutions that support all children and families. We can just hand moms another to-do list and tell them to figure it out. And we will, because moms love their families, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost.

This cycle doesn’t just harm moms. It harms all of us. It keeps women stuck in roles of unpaid labor, makes caregiving invisible, and reinforces gender inequality. It also denies children the broad, structural support they need to thrive, regardless of their abilities or circumstances.

To all the mothers fighting for their children’s needs right now, we see you. We know how hard you’re working not just to care for your children, but to navigate a world that keeps asking you to do more with less.

We need to start by asking: What would it look like if society decided to fully support the needs of children? How would things look, if we trusted moms with better information, not just fear? What could our world be like if we centered compassion instead of criticism?

Blame doesn’t build stronger families; support does.

Let’s start there.