Larry, thank you for allowing this discusion because both sides can
gain from it.

What I believe that is important and no one realizes is the fact
that a child of an unhappy mother will grow up to be an unhappy
child. I know of mothers who gave everything to their child, love,
care, affection, everything, but because of this sacrifise they
ended up being very unhappy. They hid their unhappiness from their
child pretending they were fine, but as you know there is nothing
about a parent and certainly a mother that a child won't notice,
won't know. We simply know when our parents are happy and when they
are not.

You see what reserachers fail to understand is that a parent, a
mother is a role model for the child. A happy parent/mother will
teach by example and her child will learn to also seek ways to be
happy. An unhappy mother will not give her chid this positve example
and a child of an unhappy mother will struggle with far more
depressions, and other emotions no matter if the mother brought this
child up with tones and tones of love and care.

This means that the issue is not that of a choice. A happy mother
will give more love and thus create a happy child and also teach the
child how to seek hapiness in their own life. An unhappy mother will
create an unhappy child becaus ethe child will realize the mother's
unhappiness and feel guilt, or blame itself, despite of the love it
receives.

The relationship between a mother and child is so fundamental as no
other relationship, and I am sure that Freud knew and realized that
very well only did not understand how difficult a woman's life is,
we face great choices in our lives that men do nit face. Our ability
to give birth creates both a privikledge and a burden, we have to
choose between doing what we want and doing what our body wants.

A man's life is linear a woman's life is extreme ups and downs that
are already there as a hormonal cicle every month. As a man you
can't even imagine how it is to be a woman a bit like a NT can't
imagine how it is to be autistic. There are fundamental differences
that can cause great problems and hardships.

Science should not seek to sacrifise one to benefit the other but to
create a balance between these two extremes and seek a solution that
will work both for the mothers and the children. because a happy
mother means a happy child and a happy child means a happy mother.

I will go for both, would you join me?

Star

--- In for-and-by-autistics@yahoogroups.com, "Larry D. Lyons"
<larryd552002@...> wrote:
>
> A young man is rushed into a New York City ER suffering from
internal
> injuries. The situation is desperate, and the ER physician soon
> decides he must call on the city's top surgeon to operate.
> Unfortunately, upon arrival at the ICU, the surgeon says this:
>
> "I cannot operate on this patient. He is my son."
>
> And yet the surgeon is not the boy's father. The riddle is this:
> Who is the surgeon?
>
> I will reveal the answer right away, because this riddle has been
> around a long time, and I'm sure everyone already knows the
answer.
> The surgeon is the young man's mother.
>
> I'm posting this because it is pertinent to the current
discussion.
> Perla is right that American sexism has made life miserable for
women
> through the decades. Both men and women have been programmed to
> automatically discount the possiblity that a woman could be the
> city's top surgeon. On top of that; being the mother of an
autistic
> child has increased the misery and burden of being a woman. To
make
> matters worse, Bettelheim gave rise to the suspicion that mothers
> actually caused their child's autism.
>
> The other thing that makes the riddle pertinent is the fact that
the
> mother could not operate on her son. This is because surgeons
never
> operate on people they love. There is too much risk that the
surgeon
> will become distracted by personal issues. A good surgeon needs
to
> be clear-headed and totally objective in order to minimize risk.
>
> In the situation of autism, there are two opposing currents
crashing
> into each other creating an insurmountable freak wave dilemma. On
> the one hand, researchers must be very careful of the feelings of
> autistics' mothers, because nobody wishes to harm such extremely
> vulnerable beings. On the other hand, if researchers take those
> mothers' feelings into account, they are abandoning their
> objectivity, thereby risking the well being of the children.
>
> I happen to think the children should come first. I think the
> mothers too should try and tough it out.
>
> Larry
>