I’m a Jewish mom — I think I know a few things about the Mom Blame Game. If I were a cartoon character, mom guilt would be the rain cloud I’d run from in every scene. Picture me as part of the Peanuts gang. Linus has his piano, Charlie Brown his football, and me? I’m the curly haired girl just trying to get through the world with a smile, when that little rain cloud speeds in to help me realize it’s all — all of it [gestures widely] — my fault.

I’m also a family therapist, developmental psychology researcher, and a professor. Every day I teach graduate students how to read scientific research. I do it with verve, trying in my small way to ensure there are more and more people in the world who can offer the right background and context to today’s parents, who are just trying to make sense of all of the information flying at them from beyond a screen. I say a prayer that one of my graduate students may be chosen as our next Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Every few months, the internet (or a lawyer in a position of power) discovers a new thing that “causes” autism — and just as quickly, moms everywhere are told to stop doing that thing immediately. Take Tylenol, skip Tylenol. Eat more fish, avoid fish. Assisted reproductive technologies are protective; no, a risk. And heaven forbid, you age while considering pregnancy. Oh and don’t eat fruit or go outside, everything is poisonous.

Here’s the truth: science is not handing out blame slips to pregnant women.

Association ≠ Causation (a.k.a. The Ice Cream Problem)
When researchers say something is “associated with higher risk for autism,” they are not saying that thing causes autism. They are saying, in this large group of people we looked at, two things seem to happen at the same time. In all of the things listed here as potentially related to certain symptoms consistent with autism, they are also saying, Interesting that SOMETIMES there is an association and sometimes there isn’t … what could that mean?

It’s like this: Increased ice cream sales are statistically associated with more drownings. But no one believes ice cream causes drowning. There’s a third thing they are both independently related to … summer. As much as things that co-occur can have a real relationship, it is just as likely that they do not.

So when you read about autism and…

  • Living near farms using pesticides
  • Fevers
  • Tylenol use in pregnancy
  • Being part of certain U.S. minority groups (including Ashkenazi Jews)
  • Air pollution (but maybe only diesel … or maybe not)
  • Pet flea/tick medicine
  • Or even some vinyl flooring(!)

… what scientists are really saying is: “Huh, these two things are showing up together sometimes — interesting. Let’s keep studying it. Finding out why this pattern exists sometimes could help us understand the overall sequence of development.”

Science Is Still Learning How to Ask, and Answer, the Right Questions
We are just at the beginning of understanding how genes, brains and environments interact.

Our tools are getting better — but they’re still clunky. Imagine trying to watch a movie through a straw: you’d get glimpses of the action, but you’d miss the whole plot. That’s roughly where we are with brain research.

Add to that the fact that much of the research regarding risk factors for the development of autism has been done in mice, rabbits, and monkeys. Your baby is none of those things.

A Little Autism History You Should Know
The first person to coin the term autism was not Hans Asperger — it was a brilliant Jewish-Russian psychiatrist named Grunya Sukhareva. She published more than 150 academic papers and made a groundbreaking contribution: she separated autism from schizophrenia, which had previously been lumped together.

This distinction was revolutionary — it paved the way for seeing autism as a unique condition and, over time, for starting to depathologize many of its forms. Sukhareva’s framing foreshadowed today’s neurodiversity movement, which calls on us to understand autism as a difference, not as an “injury.”

Unfortunately, Hans Asperger — an antisemite and a Nazi collaborator — built on her ideas and tried to erase her from history. Today, scholars are working to restore her rightful place as one of the founders of autism research.

Autism Is Complex — And That Makes Research Hard
One reason research feels so messy is that autism itself is not one thing. It’s a very diverse community, with a wide range of ways it shows up and then gets diagnosed.

Some autistic people need lifelong care and significant accommodations, while others live independently and experience very few limitations. And here’s the tricky part: one of the ways the mental health field decides whether something counts as a “pathology” is whether it inhibits a person’s ability to function in daily life and exercise agency. It’s not just the presence of certain symptoms, but those symptoms have to be persistent and get in one’s way. When it comes to autism, especially, the diversity of people is not just seen through how severe are one’s symptoms, but there are actually very different outward (phenotypic for my fellow science geeks) expressions of autism — different symptoms in different people are most prominent. So, when research is looking at autism as an outcome, different studies are often looking at very different things. 

This all means we aren’t just studying anatomy— we’re also asking big philosophical questions about human difference, dignity, and thriving.

The Big Picture: Genes Do a Lot of the Heavy Lifting
What researchers are fairly confident about:

  • Genetics play a major role. More than 1,200 genes and 2,200 copy-number variations are listed in the scientific autism database as playing a part.
  • Environment matters too — but as part of a duet with genetics. The environment doesn’t “cause” autism in isolation; it interacts with a person’s genotype (your DNA blueprint) and epigenotype (how your body reads that blueprint).

This is complicated science, and there’s almost no short, neat way to say it — but the most important takeaway is this: it is not within your control, through small daily choices, to determine whether your child will be autistic.

The Goal Isn’t Erasing Autistic People
The goal of good science is to understand development better so we can support kids — autistic or not — in thriving. We need better treatment and support for all children and families. 

Maybe that means finding small changes that buffer certain symptoms or reduce health risks. But it’s not about editing neurodiversity out of existence. Remember, researchers are usually measuring patterns of certain symptoms, a frequency or severity count, not a yes/no for diagnosis as the target outcome. The online reaction, in an earnest rush to protect children and their families, may be muting the voices of autistic families for whom disability is profound and medical research that promises to ease the costs of care, financial and otherwise, is lauded.

So, Parents, Take a Breath
Pregnancy is hard enough without believing you sit in a pilot seat, managing the controls to how your child’s unique DNA sequence will get expressed.

Eat the sandwich. Take the Tylenol if you need it. If you are an Ashkenazi Jew, do the premarital genetic testing.

But most of all: know that autism is not something you “caused.” That little gray cloud can find something else to take the shape of, ever present as it will always be. Development is a complex, beautiful dance of biology and environment — one that no single person, no single choice, can choreograph.

Dr. Sukhareva created a legacy of advocacy and community. She fought for all children’s rights to health, education and humanity at a time when exceptional children were imprisoned or warehoused. If we can, too, lift the cloud of persistent fear over our own individual choices, we may even be able to engage in the collective responsibility it will take to ensure all children and families experience support, community, and thriving.