Maternity Wars

Schools deal with an emerging phenomenon: parents, mostly mothers, who invent disabilities for their children.

By Lisa Fine Goldstein

As if educators didn't have enough to worry about serving the surging population of special education students, some are encountering a bizarre syndrome that disrupts and can monopolize their programs.

Unlike some childhood conditions, whose causes are a mystery and which may even go undiagnosed, the source of this problem goes by a familiar name: Mommy.

Researchers have recently documented cases of students who are victims of a rare form of child abuse called Munchausen by Proxy, in which parents—almost always mothers—fabricate or induce educational disabilities in their children out of a pathological need to...