Intelligent Love

February 15, 2021
Don't blame the moms. In this thoroughly researched and reported history of autism, Vicedo recounts the remarkable contributions of parents, particularly Clara Claiborne Park. After white male psychiatrists and psychoanalysts incorrectly and cruelly called women like her refrigerator mothers, whose coldness caused their children's condition, Park wrote a groundbreaking memoir in 1967 documenting her journey with her then nine-year-old daughter. In telling the story of how she fought to get support for Jessica, her fourth child with her physicist husband, the Radcliffe-educated writer empowered other parents. Vicedo, who holds doctorates in philosophy and the history of science, brings up important questions about what's normal. Once considered a symptom of mental illness, autism is now seen as a form of neurodiversity, not a disease. Vicedo notes that it's problematic that much of what's known still relies on so-called WEIRD subjects, individuals in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries. Expect to boo for the mother-blamers and to cheer for the entire Park family, especially Clara, who died a decade ago, and Jessica, now a mail clerk at Williams College and an artist.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.