Make America Healthy Again Commission Blames ADHD on Mothers
The following is a personal essay that reflects the opinions and experiences of its author alone.
Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., don’t understand ADHD or autism.
President Trump has a history of using the r-word. Health and Human Services Director RFK, Jr., has long maintained that vaccines cause autism, despite piles of evidence to the contrary; he’s even described autism by saying, “the brain is gone.” So it’s no shock that their new Make America Healthy Again Commission, established February 13, bristles with misunderstanding about both the rise in ADHD and autism diagnoses, and so-called “over-medication” of these and other conditions.
We’ve heard it all before. “Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates… during the 1980s,” they say. In the case of ADHD, “over 3.4 million children are now on medication for the disorder — up from 3.2 million children in 2019-2020 — and the number of children being diagnosed with the condition continues to rise.” It’s the kind of desperate handwringing we often hear from the fringes. Seeing it in an executive order from the president’s desk is admittedly scary.
The commission offers up all manner of scapegoats for this so-called rise in neurodivergence, or possibly false diagnoses. There are the usual suspects: diet, lifestyle, environmental factors. It also offers up some new boogeymen, including the “absorption of toxic material,” “medical treatments,” “electromagnetic radiation,” and “corporate influence or cronyism.” Never does this executive order grope toward the real reason: Refined diagnostic standards and outreach programs have created a wider net, which catches children before they spiral downward in adulthood. These improved standards have benefited all neurodivergent people, but particularly women and minorities.
ADHD Has Excluded Girls and Women
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, we thought attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was a condition for boys who couldn’t sit still. Millions of girls daydreamed and drifted in class. We made careless mistakes. We underperformed. We talked too much. But no one noticed. We were girls, and we didn’t cause a fuss. Now we know that those little girls also had ADHD. I was one of them. Yes, the number of children diagnosed with ADHD has risen, and thank God for it.
[Read: Why ADHD in Women is Routinely Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Treated Inadequately]
Every year, I see those little girls in my classroom, and I sit their parents down for the talk: Have you considered having your daughter tested? I tell them: Look, she’s 9, 10, 11. It may not seem like a big deal now, and sure, she’s doing great. But when she’s 15 or 18 or 30, that picture may look a lot different. I had all As ‘til I rage-quit a doctoral program. And every year, some parents ignore me. Others go on to get their daughters tested. Those kids go into the world armed with the help they need.
I have three boys, all with ADHD. None would have been caught in the diagnostic net of 1988 — they aren’t severe enough, troublesome enough. One has mixed-type ADHD that severely impacts his ability to concentrate on subjects he doesn’t like. He would desperately underperform without medical help. Another has inattentive ADHD, and he copes fine without medication at the moment. The youngest also has inattentive type and needs medication to function. He would have slipped through the cracks.
My husband and I both soldiered through school without ADHD diagnoses. Like most undiagnosed neurodivergent kids, we knew we weren’t like everyone else, but we didn’t know why. Therefore, we assumed something was terribly wrong with us, and it must be our fault. We blamed laziness — after all, weren’t teachers always demanding to know why we made so many careless mistakes? We blamed intellectual inferiority — we must be dumber than everyone else if we couldn’t pay attention.
Our self-esteem took a beating. This is remarkably common in the neurodivergent community. We’re trying to save our kids from it, and we’ve made remarkable headway.
With one stroke of a pen, this executive order would undo all that progress.
[Get This Free Download: A Parent’s Guide to ADHD Medications]
We’re Back to Blaming Parents for ADHD
U.S. Senator Tom Turberville (R-Alabama) lamented during RFK Jr.’s Senate confirmation hearings, “Attention deficit [ADHD], when you and I were growing up, our parents didn’t use a drug; they used a belt and whipped our butt… Nowadays, we give them Adderall and Ritalin. It’s like candy across college campuses and high school campuses.”
Then he asked Kennedy what he planned to do about the so-called over-prescription of stimulant medication for ADHD. The MAHA Commission is looking for someone to blame, and it has clearly chosen mothers. Why didn’t you feed your child organic food? Why did you vaccinate them? Why don’t you take them outside more, take away their screen? Why did you hand them a pill instead of parenting properly? It’s rife with assumptions, chief among them: This is your fault.
Once we blamed autism on cold mothers. Then we blamed it on their decision to vaccinate. Now we blame ADHD on permissive parenting.
Tuberville and Kennedy assume we give our kids pills because it’s “easier” than using an authoritarian style of parenting. We should be spanking the hyperactivity out of our kids instead of handing them Ritalin! That’ll cure the fidgets!
Clearly, none of these people have read the research: Authoritarian parenting leads to more negative outcomes, including aggression, delinquent behaviors, and anxiety. And that’s in neurotypical children. Ironically, authoritarian parenting — what Tuberville is suggesting when he tells us not to spare the rod — is shown to exacerbate ADHD symptoms.
We’re doing the best we can.
The Decision to Medicate Is Not Taken Lightly
No one gives their children medication as a first, second, or third choice. We try everything. We mess with their sleep schedules. We cut out foods and add fish oil. We give them more exercise and we modify their screen time. We try schedules. We try chore charts. We modify our parenting. We attempt everything. Ritalin scares us. And ADHD medication is hard to find — do these people really think we have the spare time to cruise different pharmacies, to try to find who has our prescription in stock? Do they think we want to obsess over side effects?
Handing your child a pill is scary. But some kids need it the way other kids need a heart medication, a diabetes medication. We should never pull a life-saving medication from a child.
Why do we think ADHD medication is optional? It’s not over-utilized. It’s not over-prescribed. It’s proven safe and effective and preventative for so many adverse outcomes.
We are doing the best we can by our children. The Make America Healthy Again Executive Order is rife with misunderstandings and assumptions about kids with ADHD and the people who parent them. Don’t blame parents — mothers, of course they mean mothers — for their kids’ brain differences. All people with ADHD and autism deserve the same respect and accommodation as other citizens, and that includes the right to medication at a doctor’s discretion. Our kids deserve better than this executive order. And so do we.
Make America Healthy Again Commission: Next Steps
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