system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
My child's pediatrician told me autism is caused by the mother's relationship with the child. Is there any evidence for this?

My child is fine and doesn't have autism but when he was getting a vaccination, I asked the doctor if he had many patients who don't get their children vaccinated because they think it causes autism.  He went on a long rant about that but then said he can detect autism signs in infants and that he believes it is caused by mothers who don't know how to respond to their babies' emotional cues.  He also said that when he sees this happening he can intervene and help the mother stop autism from blossoming in their child.  He went on to say that he keeps these opinions to himself mostly because the autism community would start a witch hunt against him.  Is he out of his mind or is there some merit to this?
gpt
His opinion is a very old theory, and one largely discredited by the psychiatric community.  Autism has a strong neurobiological and heritable (genomic) component, so "blaming the mother/parents" is neither supported by evidence nor particularly conducive to getting quality treatment.