title: Infantilizing Autism.
abstract: When members of the public envision the disability of autism, they most likely envision a child, rather than an adult. In this empirically based essay, three authors, one of whom is an autistic self-advocate, analyzed the role played by parents, charitable organizations, the popular media, and the news industry in infantilizing autism. Parents portrayed the face of autism to be that of a child 95% of the time on the homepages of regional and local support organizations. Nine of the top 12 autism charitable organizations restricted descriptions of autism to child-referential discourse. Characters depicted as autistic were children in 90% of fictional books and 68% of narrative films and television programs. The news industry featured autistic children four times as often as they featured autistic adults in contemporary news articles. The cyclical interaction between parent-driven autism societies, autism fundraising charities, popular media, and contemporary news silences adult self-advocates by denying their very existence. Society's overwhelming proclivity for depicting autism as a disability of childhood poses a formidable barrier to the dignity and well-being of autistic people of all ages.
authors.affiliation: Assistant professor of psychology, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA. jstevenson@ursinus.edu.
authors.forename: Jennifer L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Stevenson
authors.affiliation: University of Kentucky, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA. baharp2@uky.edu.
authors.forename: Bev
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Harp
authors.affiliation: Vilas Research Professor and the Sir Frederic Bartlett Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Collegeville, PA. MAGernsb@wisc.edu.
authors.forename: Morton Ann
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Gernsbacher
keywords: Autism; charity; infantilization; media; parents