The Production of the ‘Normal’ Child: Neurodiversity and the Commodification of Parenting

The creation of autism as a diagnostic category, and the societal responses to it recommended currently and, in the past, has a specific historical and sociological context. This chapter examines how the autism category arose in concert with developments in educational psychology, industrial psychology, and the child guidance movement. It further discusses the impact of eugenic discourses, the concept of the child as ‘product’, and increased medicalisation of behaviour on production of discourses of regulated normalcy in childhood and beyond, and the consequences of these on the category of autism. The goal of this socioeconomic project, which goes far beyond autism per se, is shown to be production of financial advantage for employers; it has also involved successful commodification of deviance, producing financial gains for companies providing putative solutions or care. Negative impacts on families and on children who do not fit the norm (including those identified as autistic) are discussed.