'Bad parenting' trope is back in the frame for autism

For many families, the hardest part of seeking help is not their child’s distress, but the suggestion they are somehow to blame

History shows many conditions now recognised as disabilities were once dismissed as moral weakness or poor parenting. 

There is a growing argument that rising diagnoses of conditions such as ADHD, autism, or pathological demand avoidance (PDA) reflect not children’s changing needs, but adults’ diminishing authority. 

Writing recently in the Sunday Times (“If a child says won’t, don’t reach for a label”), Professor Kathleen Stock suggested behaviours now described as PDA might once have been managed with firmer parenting, joking it might also be aided by a comforting gin. 

Drawing on her experience of raising what she describes as a “bolshie little boy” who later became a “charming, accommodating young man”, she suggests parenting culture has drifted toward permissive, therapeutic over-interpretation. Where she sees temperament and development, others, she argues, now see disorder.

Behind this viewpoint lies a more troubling implication: that parents who seek understanding or support for their children are overreacting, indulgent, or simply unwilling to set limits. The underlying claim is that parents have become reluctant to enforce boundaries. 

The suggestion, also echoed by commentators like Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan, is that “labelling” a child may cause harm. The implication is clear: as firm discipline falls out of favour, ordinary defiance is being medicalised. 

In reality, however, it is difficult to sustain the claim rising diagnoses are simply the result of weakened parenting. Suggesting firmer discipline would resolve these difficulties does not just oversimplify reality, it risks denying support to children who need it most.

Children can sometimes be challenging. Ordinary defiance exists. In most cases, however, this does not escalate to serious dysregulation. But discussions of PDA do not centre on everyday reluctance or ordinary boundary-testing. 

It concerns a smaller group of individuals (many of them autistic) for whom ordinary demands can trigger acute anxiety, loss of control and prolonged dysregulation across settings. This is not ordinary reluctance or oppositional behaviour. It is often an anxiety response that can escalate, leading to prolonged distress.

Calling severe anxiety or distress “bad behaviour” may make for tidy commentary, but families live with the consequences, often alone. As one recent Irish Independent parent piece on autism and PDA makes clear, families are often not asking, “How do I make my child comply?” but “How do I reduce the pressure causing overwhelming distress?” 

Although PDA is not recognised as a standalone diagnosis, clinicians have long described patterns of anxiety-driven demand avoidance, particularly within autism services. The debate about classification continues, but for families and practitioners, the central issue is not terminology. They are looking for guidance and for support in managing very significant challenges.

To describe this evolving body of work as a “pseudo-clinical label” is not just sceptical but dismissive, framing parents and practitioners as engaged in fashionable self-deception. 

Stock explicitly attributes the increase in discussions of PDA to parents “neurotically fussing” over acceptable approaches to discipline. 

That is a serious charge, but one that is all too familiar. Such perspectives protect the system and shift responsibility back onto parents, who are framed as asking for too much. It also implies distress is more “accurately” understood as a failure of discipline or resolve.

Indeed, parents in our PDA study, published in 2022, noted practitioners referenced poor parenting skills and attachment issues as key contributors to demand avoidance. 

These parents described being blamed, questioned, and sent on parenting courses as the first-line response to manage their children’s wellbeing or behavioural difficulties. 

One parent described “a focus on helping me 'cope' instead of getting my son the services he needs". While a parenting course is cheaper than specialist support, it is often the child who pays for that shortcut. 

There are lifelong impacts, as one adult living with PDA summarised: “Ideally, nobody must ever be allowed to live a life like mine again on any excuse. It has been a totally unnecessary kind of hell.” 

In education and healthcare systems, support is rarely granted based on anecdote. Parents are often required to justify their concerns through a formal assessment. A diagnosis becomes not an indulgence, but evidence. 

For many families, it is not a philosophical identity statement but the first step in accessing accommodations, specialist input and protection from punitive responses to behaviours rooted in distress. 

A label does not create a difference — it makes children’s needs visible to systems. In schools and clinics, distress is still too often read as defiance first and disability second.

Complex presentations are too often reduced to a narrative about declining standards and over-indulgent adults. Treating them as interchangeable may satisfy a desire for simplicity, but it does little for the families left navigating them. 

History also shows many conditions now recognised as disabilities were once dismissed as moral weakness or poor parenting. For example, “refrigerator mothers” were once blamed as the cause of autism in their children.

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The real issue is not whether we have become too soft, but whether we can distinguish between behaviour that requires firmer boundaries and behaviour that signals deeper distress. That distinction, however uncomfortable, is the work of responsible adults and cannot be resolved with motivated nostalgia for the “good old days”.

• Dr Neil Kenny is associate professor at the School of Inclusive and Special Education, DCU
• Dr Alison Doyle is a chartered educational psychologist