POV
Season 15 Episode 2 - Refrigerator Mothers
It is America of the 1950s and 1960s, when a woman's most important contribution to society is generally considered to be her ability to raise happy, well-adjusted children. But for the mother whose child is diagnosed with autism, her life's purpose will soon become a twisted nightmare. Looking for help and support, she encounters instead a medical establishment that pins the blame for her child's bizarre behaviors on her supposedly frigid and detached mothering. Along with a heartbreaking label for her child, she receives a devastating label of her own. She is a "refrigerator mother". Refrigerator Mothers paints an intimate portrait of an entire generation of mothers, already laden with the challenge of raising profoundly disordered children, who lived for years under the dehumanizing shadow of professionally promoted "mother blame."
Episodes in Season 15
Hybrid
60 min
Refrigerator Mothers
60 min
Fenceline: A Company Town Divided
60 min
Sweet Old Song
60 min
Mai's America
60 min
Senorita Extraviada
60 min
Escuela
60 min
Afghanistan 1380
60 min
Boomtown
60 min
Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin
60 min
Two Towns of Jasper
60 min
