Echoes of Harm: How Autism Research Still Blames Mothers

A Critical Examination of Memory, Ethics, and the Persistence of Eugenic Thinking in Autism Studies

A critical reflection on Davidsson et al. (2025), exploring how flawed assumptions, neurotypical bias, and echoes of eugenics continue to harm neurodivergent families under the guise of scientific inquiry.

Citation

Davidsson, M., Ringström, F., Hagberg, B., Gillberg, C., & Billstedt, E. (2025). Adverse childhood experiences in children with neurodevelopmental disorders and their parents. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 79(3), 185–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039488.2025.2469737

Introduction

It was an ordinary morning, the kind where I try to catch up on the slow but steady current of new research trickling into my inbox. As I scrolled through the usual offerings—updates on neurodevelopment, trauma studies, mental health policy—a headline caught my eye: “Mom’s Childhood Trauma May Influence Kids with ADHD and ASD.” It came from a “science news” aggregator I often glance through, Neuroscience News, which tends to summarise newly published research for a broader audience. The framing was familiar, almost too familiar, and something deep in my chest tightened in response.

As an IRB chair, I try to keep abreast of developments that may influence ethical standards in research involving vulnerable populations. As someone who is AuDHD and alexithymic, I also read these stories with a second set of eyes—an internal awareness of how easily studies about “people like me” miss the essential realities of our lives. The headline alone suggested a return to a narrative I know well: that somehow, the difficulties of neurodivergent children are laid at the feet of their mothers. But rather than dismiss it outright, I resolved to find and read the original study itself.

The source turned out to be an article published in the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry by Davidsson et al. (2025). As is my habit, I downloaded the full paper, made a fresh cup of tea, and sat down to read with both a critical professional lens and the emotional vigilance that lived experience teaches. Before I had finished the abstract, I already knew this study would trouble me—not just because of what it said, but because of what it assumed without question. I could feel it in the framing, in the choice of what was measured and what was left unsaid. From the outset, I knew I was not only reading as a scientist; I was reading as someone whose existence was, yet again, being discussed without my voice or experience ever having been invited into the room.

First Impressions: A Familiar Pattern

From the first few pages, a familiar unease began to settle. There it was again: the heavy-handed framing that places mothers at the centre of blame for their children's differences. Though dressed in the careful language of contemporary psychology, the old echoes were unmistakable. Kanner’s shadow still lingers, it seems, his early speculations about cold, unloving mothers quietly repackaged through the lens of adverse childhood experiences. The study positioned maternal trauma as the significant variable of interest, the lens through which the difficulties of autistic and ADHD children were to be understood. The father’s role was all but absent, mentioned only briefly to note a lack of association, with no real interrogation of sample size or caregiving dynamics. Once more, the mother is made both the origin and the explanation.

As I read further, the silences became as loud as the claims. There was no mention—none at all—of alexithymia or the known differences in memory processing among neurodivergent populations. Nothing to suggest the authors recognised that the very people they were studying might not encode, retrieve, or describe emotional experiences in the same way as the neurotypical individuals for whom the ACE questionnaires were originally designed. There was no engagement with the fundamental question of validity: whether the tools they used were appropriate for the population at hand. It was painfully clear that the researchers did not understand the inner landscape of the lives they were surveying.

Even more concerning was the casual acceptance of retrospective self-report as if it were neutral, objective, and universally reliable. That children and parents were being asked to excavate their own difficult histories without any recognition that memory itself—particularly emotional memory—is filtered through neurocognitive style, trauma responses, and developmental differences, revealed a profound naivety about the terrain they were traversing.

By the time I reached the methods section, I found myself no longer wondering whether the study had involved any autistic or ADHD individuals in its design or review. It was obvious: it had not. No AuDHD researcher would have allowed these omissions to pass unremarked. No autistic or ADHD IRB reviewer, aware of the emotional landscape we inhabit, would have failed to ask the questions that now burned in my mind. The critical disconnection was complete. Once again, a study had set out to speak about us, but not with us, and certainly not for us.

The IRB Questions: What I Would Have Asked

Were this study to have come before me in my role as IRB chair, several questions would have been immediate and unavoidable. Questions that arise not from pedantry, but from the solemn responsibility we bear when humans—not abstractions—are the subjects of our inquiry. Questions sharpened, too, by lived experience, by knowing intimately how neurodivergent minds move through the world and through memory.

The first would have been simple, fundamental, and perhaps fatal to the study’s design: has the ACE questionnaire been validated for use with neurodivergent populations? Specifically, has it been validated with autistic and ADHD individuals, whose emotional processing, memory encoding, and retrieval styles are well-documented as differing from the neurotypical majority? The answer, found nowhere in the study, is no. The authors cite no validation work in neurodivergent populations, nor do they even raise the question. The instrument they employed was developed and normed on general, neurotypical populations. The assumption that it would perform identically across fundamentally different cognitive styles remained unexamined.

The second question follows naturally: how does the study control for alexithymia, a trait known to profoundly impact emotional memory and self-report in both autistic and ADHD populations? Again, the answer is silence. There is no indication that participants were screened for alexithymia, nor that any statistical adjustment was made to account for its potential influence. Yet alexithymia is not a marginal or rare feature in these communities; it is widespread. Without accounting for it, the reliability of self-reported ACE data in this population becomes deeply questionable. The study’s central associations—between maternal trauma and child outcomes—are built on a foundation whose cracks are both wide and obvious to anyone who knows the landscape.

Third, I would have asked what protections were in place for participants, especially children, who were being asked to revisit potentially traumatic experiences. It is well established that recalling adverse childhood experiences can evoke distress, particularly for individuals with emotional regulation differences or heightened sensory processing. Trauma-informed research practice demands that we do more than merely obtain consent; we must provide safeguards, supports, and clear pathways for participants to pause, withdraw, or access care if needed. Yet the study describes no specific trauma-informed procedures beyond noting that it was approved by an ethical review board. There is no mention of emotional monitoring, no real-time supports offered, no post-assessment debriefing for participants. The children’s needs, particularly given their neurodevelopmental profiles, seem to have been an afterthought at best.

Finally, I would have asked how the study’s clinical recommendations—chiefly the proposal to implement routine ACE screening in neurodevelopmental assessments—would address the potential harm of such screening if conducted without the necessary nuance. Screening for trauma is not neutral; it is a clinical intervention in its own right. It carries risks: of retraumatisation, of misinterpretation, of stigma. Yet the authors make no mention of these dangers. Their recommendations assume only benefit, suggesting that more screening, more identification, will naturally lead to better outcomes. It is a dangerous assumption, particularly when based on data gathered without due regard for the distinct ways that autistic and ADHD individuals experience, encode, and recall adversity.

Had these questions been raised at the design stage—or had voices from the neurodivergent community been at the table—they could have been addressed. The study could have been strengthened, its harms mitigated, its insights deepened. But instead, these questions were left unasked. And the result is a study that speaks confidently about people like me, while missing the ground beneath its own feet.

Why These Questions Matter: The Ethics of Human Research

There is a principle at the heart of all ethical research, one so fundamental that it can almost become invisible through repetition: we are studying human beings, not abstractions. It is not data points or diagnostic labels who sit across from us in the interview room. It is people—complex, vulnerable, shaped by histories and contexts we can never fully know. As an IRB chair, this principle is my compass. And when it is forgotten, or set aside for the sake of expediency or theoretical neatness, the damage runs deeper than a flawed dataset. It strikes at the dignity of those who place their trust in us.

Vulnerable populations—children, disabled individuals, those with neurodevelopmental differences—require additional protections, not fewer. Their participation in research must be approached with heightened care, not casual assumptions. It is not enough to obtain consent. It is not enough to point to an ethics approval letter. To study people who are at greater risk of misunderstanding, misrepresentation, or harm demands that we build processes that honour their ways of being, even—and especially—when those ways differ from the dominant norms.

ACE screening, in particular, is not a neutral act. To ask someone to recall and categorise their worst experiences is not a light or passive request. It involves emotional exposure, potential re-traumatisation, and the risk of stigma if that information is later mishandled. For neurodivergent individuals—especially those who are autistic, ADHD, or alexithymic—the act of emotional recall itself differs from the patterns assumed by mainstream psychological models. Memories may be fragmentary, sensory, intensely vivid or curiously flat. Emotional meaning may be hard to access, or overwhelming when it surfaces. Timelines may blur. What is salient to the individual may not align with what the questionnaire expects to capture.

To ignore these differences is not merely a methodological oversight. It is an ethical failure. It presumes a universality of experience that does not exist. It risks drawing conclusions that pathologise the very people it purports to understand. It sacrifices the participants’ humanity on the altar of scientific neatness. As researchers, as reviewers, as members of a shared human community, we are called to do better than this. We must never forget whose lives, whose memories, and whose trust are held in the balance.

Deep Dive: The Memory Landscape of AuDHD Individuals

To truly understand why studies like Davidsson et al. (2025) are so precarious, one must first understand the very different memory landscapes inhabited by AuDHD individuals. Memory is not a uniform human faculty. How events are encoded, stored, and retrieved varies significantly between neurotypes, particularly in relation to emotional and autobiographical material.

Autistic memory is often characterised by strong episodic qualities—memories that are vivid, detailed, and sensory-laden (Crane, Pring, Jukes, & Goddard, 2012). Autistic individuals frequently encode experiences in ways that are less integrated with an overarching narrative and more grounded in isolated sensory or factual details. Emotional valence, which tends to amplify memory in neurotypical populations, does not consistently enhance memory for autistic individuals. Indeed, several studies have shown that autistic individuals remember emotional and neutral information with similar fidelity, suggesting that emotional content does not necessarily mark memories for enhanced recall (Meints, 2013; Mottron, Morasse, & Belleville, 2001). Emotional information, when retrieved, may either be dissociated from the factual core of a memory or experienced with overwhelming intensity if a sensory or relational cue triggers it (Xu et al., 2017). Additionally, memory retrieval in autism appears highly sensitive to self-relevance rather than emotional salience per se—autistic individuals are more likely to recall information that connects to their internal framework of self rather than to broadly social emotional cues (Komeda et al., 2013).

ADHD memory, while different again, carries its own distinct challenges. Time perception is widely documented as disrupted in ADHD, leading to memories that are temporally fragmented, inconsistent, or difficult to sequence (Toplak & Tannock, 2005; Weissenberger et al., 2021; Metcalfe, McFeaters, & Voyer, 2024). Emotional salience can play a chaotic role: emotional stimuli can either bolster memory strength or interfere with working memory, depending on context and cognitive load (Nazari, Mirloo, Rezaei, & Soltanlou, 2018; Marx et al., 2011). Emotional memory enhancements are inconsistent across ADHD subtypes and are further complicated by comorbidities such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Conduct Disorder (Krauel et al., 2009). At the same time, research suggests that emotional interference can significantly disrupt working memory processes, meaning that emotional recall may not only be biased but also structurally impaired in ADHD (Marx et al., 2011; Lee & Yang, 2019).

Alexithymia, common to both autistic and ADHD populations, adds a further layer of complexity. Defined by difficulties in sourcing, identifying, and describing one’s own emotions, alexithymia impacts not only current emotional awareness but also the emotional tagging of memories. This can result in memories that are factually intact but emotionally flat, or memories where emotional resonance is recalled without clear narrative structure (Liu, Lin, & Cheng, 2021). In practical terms, when asked ACE-style questions such as whether they were emotionally neglected, a participant with alexithymia may struggle to interpret or assess their experiences against socially normative expectations.

Given these well-established differences, the use of standard ACE frameworks—which were developed based on neurotypical assumptions about memory, emotional processing, and self-report—represents a profound methodological mismatch. Such frameworks presume that participants can accurately identify, categorise, and sequence emotional experiences in accordance with neurotypical norms. For AuDHD individuals, this expectation is not simply unrealistic; it is structurally unfair.

The implications are not merely academic. If an autistic or ADHD mother endorses items indicating emotional abuse or neglect, it may reflect a single vivid incident that is re-experienced with sensory immediacy rather than an ongoing pattern. Alternatively, significant relational trauma may go unreported if emotional meaning is hard to access or articulate. Similarly, time perception difficulties in ADHD may lead to temporal distortions—where isolated events are perceived as enduring patterns, or vice versa.

Therefore, correlating maternal ACE scores with child outcomes without adjusting for neurocognitive style does not produce a neutral, objective dataset. It creates false patterns—patterns that risk blaming mothers for the neurodevelopmental profiles of their children, when in fact what is being captured is a complex interaction between memory, emotional processing, and social expectations. It risks constructing pathology where there is only difference, harm where there is only another way of being.

The failure to recognise these dynamics is not a minor methodological flaw. It is a systematic erasure of neurodivergent ways of remembering, feeling, and narrating life experience. It substitutes the experiences of autistic and ADHD individuals with a distorted reflection shaped by neurotypical expectations. Studies like Davidsson et al. (2025) do not merely miss the mark; they actively perpetuate misunderstandings that have historically harmed the very populations they claim to study.

Summary: Why I Write These Reflections

In today’s research ecosystem, studies like this one rarely remain confined to academic journals. Within days of publication, their findings are distilled, simplified, and broadcast through “science news” platforms that reach millions. A headline becomes a soundbite. A correlation becomes a cause. And before long, a speculative association between maternal trauma and a child’s neurodevelopment is treated as established fact. For many readers—clinicians, educators, even policymakers—these summaries are all they will ever see. And when flawed science is translated into public narrative, it calcifies into cultural “truth.”

This is why I write these reflections. Not to tear down individual researchers, but to slow the process of unquestioned uptake. To introduce friction where there is currently only momentum. As both an IRB chair and a neurodivergent person, I carry a dual responsibility. One part procedural, grounded in policy and protocol. One part personal, grounded in lived experience, in the knowledge of how it feels to be spoken about without ever being seen.

When neurodivergent populations are studied without neurodivergent participation, mistakes are not the exception—they are the rule. The errors become predictable: tools that don’t fit, assumptions that don’t hold, conclusions that quietly reinforce the systems that already fail us. These are not harmless missteps. They shape how we are treated, how we are supported—or not—within schools, clinics, social services, and families. They shape how we are understood. Or misunderstood.

And so these essays, these quiet interventions, are my way of resisting that trajectory. They are small acts of accountability. They ask not just what a study found, but how it was done, for whom, and with whose voice absent. They are a reminder that research must do more than describe—it must dignify. It must not merely include diverse populations in its subject matter, but honour the full humanity, complexity, and agency of those it seeks to understand. Anything less is not science. It is colonisation by another name.

Final thoughts …

This is not just about one study. It is about a larger pattern, old in its bones and yet dressed in the garments of contemporary science. It is ableism, masked as research. It is the same cold breath that drifted through Kanner’s early writings—the implication that neurodivergent children are tragedies, and that their mothers are to blame for daring to bring them into the world at all. The language is softer now, couched in references to adverse childhood experiences and emotional regulation, but the shape of the accusation remains unmistakable. It is an echo of eugenics: the belief that certain lives are less fit to be lived, and that the moral failing lies with those who allow such lives to continue.

The scapegoating of mothers, particularly neurodivergent mothers, persists with stubborn cruelty. Wrapped in the veneer of scientific objectivity, it claims not to judge, only to measure. Yet what it measures is always weighed against a neurotypical standard, and what it finds wanting is always located in the mother’s body, the mother’s mind, the mother’s past. Trauma is handled not as a sacred responsibility, but as raw material for constructing neat causal chains—chains that invariably tether suffering back to the maternal figure.

What makes this even more galling is that the knowledge necessary to avoid these errors is neither arcane nor inaccessible. The research documenting differences in autistic memory, ADHD time perception, and the role of alexithymia in emotional recall is readily available. Every source I have referenced in this article was found through a simple search on Google Scholar. It is not a lack of information that allows these patterns to persist, but a lack of willingness to seek it out and to be changed by what is found.

We must do better. It is not enough to include neurodivergent people in research only as subjects. We must be there as architects, as reviewers, as stewards of the ethical terrain. Lived experience must cease to be treated as a courtesy and must instead be recognised as a foundation without which no study should proceed. If research continues to speak of us without us, to frame our existence as an error and our parenthood as a risk, then it is not neutral. It is a continuation of eugenics by quieter, more socially acceptable means.

We can, and we must, dismantle this. We can, and we must, build better.

Footnote: On Validation of ACE Surveys in Autistic Populations

After writing and editing this piece, I revisited the question of whether standard Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) surveys have been validated specifically for autistic populations. The answer, unsurprisingly, is no. Research shows that autistic individuals experience higher rates of ACEs than non-autistic peers (Hartley et al., 2023), and that these experiences negatively affect educational outcomes and access to support services (Hartwell et al., 2024). However, few studies have critically examined whether the ACE instruments themselves are valid or appropriate for autistic populations. A systematic review highlights the significant variability in how ACEs are measured in adults with autistic traits, noting a clear need for instruments adapted to neurodivergent experiences of trauma and memory (Webb et al., 2024). In other words, the problem is not just that autistic individuals are vulnerable to ACEs—it is that we are often measured using tools built for minds and memories not our own. This only deepens the concerns raised throughout the article. If we are serious about ethical research, then we must be serious about creating measurement tools that reflect, rather than distort, neurodivergent realities.

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