Modern Consensus on Refrigerator Moms?

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While it's well known that "refrigerator moms" don't cause autism, is there any consensus for why they were linked with autism in the first place? I can think of 4 possible explanations:

1. The mothers themselves were mildly autistic, causing them to come across as cold. Other genetic traits related to autism also count.
2. The mothers were less affectionate towards their children because they were acting reciprocally to their children's behavior. The children acted less affectionately, so return the mother acts less affectionately to the child. The mother could also be more stressed and as a result become less affectionate in general.
3. There actually is some merit to the theory. It doesn't cause autism, but mild autism may become more severe if the child is emotionally neglected.
4. There actually is not such connection, and the idea just persisted due to confirmation bias or the like.

It's possible multiple for these explanations to hold, but is there a general consensus in the scientific community?

Those all sound pretty plausible. Could be all of them. There is one major one which came from Kanner himself and is cultural and since disappeared. Apparently at the time Kanner did his research it was the norm for women to get married and have kids at least by their early 20's. Kanner noted in his paper that an oddly high proportion of the mothers who brought their kids to him didn't have those kids until their late 20's,early 30's.

That's common now and doesn't stick out at all. But back then it struck him as very weird. He figured there was a connection between women delaying childbirth and autism in kids. His idea was that they had no maternal feelings at all and so delayed having kids as long as possible. This assumption of the lack of maternal feelings caused him to create the Refrigerator Mother theory.

Now it's so common for women to wait to have kids that nobody needs to think up an explanation for why any woman would. Even so, current research has confirmed his observation that there is a statistical connection between older moms and autistic kids. It's harder to see these days because many women delay having kids so there are many moms of NT kids. And some young moms have AS kids. But the connection is apparently real if harder to see these days.

Why was there such a skew to older moms that Kanner could see it in his office easily? It might be that back then the NT majority women were getting married at 20 and having kids at 21 so that AS women were a much greater majority of the ones getting married older and he was actually seeing AS in the moms but not realizing it. He would wrongly assume that they never wanted kids and that's why they waited till 30 but actually it was because they were AS women.

The mother feels detached beacause of the child's lack of reciprocity.

"refrigerator moms" theory was fake Bruno Bettelheim forged his credentials and suffered from mental illness..
The truth is these experts barely spent any time with the mothers.

While some of these parents probably had autism
its also myth that all autistic are cold and unfeeling as well

I don't know about a scientific consensus, but 1, 2, and 3 all hold some degree of water.

I KNOW that I'm more standoffish than most mothers; probably because they all have at least a dash of autism, my kids seem to thrive under it and honestly to be sort of intimidated and weirded out by those stereotypically wonderful, bouncy, in-your-stuff moms. I don't know that I'd call myself "refrigerator." Certainly affection is doled out around our house-- just not crammed down the kids' throats with a ladle.

Certainly a child that does not reciprocate, and may respond in an aversive manner to a lot of contact and affections, is going to result in a parent (at least, if the parent is smart) who is not terribly demonstrative. Trying to give an autistic kid affection in the same way that you would give an NT kid affection makes about as much sense as fixing a porterhouse steak for a zebra. It's not going to work.

That is, of course, before we discuss parents who actually do withdraw from and borderline reject that odd, unrewarding, difficult child.

Who, left in their own little world, may or may not become "more autistic," but certainly would have neither incentive nor map nor tools to learn to participate in the world occupied by the majority of people.

I don't believe in the "Refrigerator Mother" theory--though I was autistic at the time of that theory's preeminence, and I find my mother cold and narcissistic at times.

Although 1-4 may all have relevance, I think for moms with AS, a big thing is people being self centered and assuming because the mother seems odd or standoffish to them, she is with her children rather than observing who she is to her kids. And then assuming because the mom makes them uneasy or seems weird, she has messed up her kids.

I have trouble understanding how AS dads, though, tend to be quickly identified as AS dads and not blamed.

Does anyone understand why this is?

I don't believe AS moms have been "blamed" since the heyday of the "Refrigerator Mother Theory."

Autism is rarely seen as being a primarily "environment"-caused condition these days.

My mother is NT and she is absolutely not cold, she is warm, kind and understanding.

I never had any problems with being touched until I was 9 1/2 - 10, then something happened and I couldn't stand it after that. Before that I was fine with being hugged and tickled (a beloved game when I was little). As a baby and toddler the best way to stop me crying was to pick me up. I loved being picked up and held. I loved having their attention and company, and I was never indifferent to where they were. We bonded very well, and my mother and I have always had very good relations and closeness. I was also very close with my grandfather. Family members are the only ones I have ever bonded with IRL, and the only humans I love. And that bond is real and strong.
Me being aspie means our communication isn't always gonna be perfect, but that doesn't make the closeness we have any lesser.
She has said several times that I am a friend as well as a daughter. That she can really talk to me.

So that's number 1 and 2 out the window. Her being loving and caring didn't stop me from having Asperger's, so in my case at least there is no correlation. I very much doubt there is in any. Something in my genes caused my brain to develop wrong despite growing up in a loving and safe environment .

I hate the refrigerator mom theory. I can imagine it having caused a lot of despair in mothers, being blamed for their child's condition. This "theory" needs to be put out of its misery once and for all.

@Waterfalls

I think all parents have to acknowledge that we don't always model good behaviours and sometimes we don't model good coping or compensating behaviours in areas where we have problems or issues.

As parents, we're all a titch sensitive about how we raise our kids and how our personalities and behavior impact negatively on the learned behaviours of our children. I know I've been sensitive about stuff when my son has problems with language delay or his terrible handwriting (dysgraphia??) and some of his attitudes. For some of these I think I've passed on these traits unwittingly (I had terrible handwriting, too) but sometimes I don't think I'm helping matters and could be dealing with things differently.

So in a way it's GOOD if professionals help us interact better with our kids, but it has to be handled sensitively.

As for the blaming moms over dads...yeah, I think it's always been like that. For one, moms do tend to spend more time with their kids - or at least that's the assumption. But some of the blame is plain old sexism.

I gather the scientific consensus is that Autism is largely a genetic issue. But environmental issues whether physical or emotional or mental might bring it out more. In that sense a person who is genetically predisposed toward autism who has one or more parents who are not able to adequately provide the emotional support required of parents - mother or father - probably have a greater chance of developing autism. Of course, clearly there are many parents of autistic children who are fantastic parents.

No doubt an autistic child with stable, secure and devoted parents will fair much better with their autism than if they had the opposite. Unfortunately in my case I had the opposite. If I could live life over again - I suppose I would welcome the mild autism I have - provided I had stable, secure and devoted parents. Frankly, it would help to have financially prosperous and secure parents as well. I'm sure financial stress exacerbates the stressful conditions of any family with any special needs children.