to think rising levels of neuro diverse children in society is partly due to rising ages of pregnant mothers?

[staydazzling]

im not condeming anything here btw, i would like to make that clear. and i know this may not go down well on here, donning hard hat but whenever theres discussions about how neurological diversity in children has risen ASD, ADHD etc in society, the conversion is often about MMR Ipads or diet, discipline etc which of course all important variables but i feel its unhelpful that a lot of would be mothers are not informed of the risk past 35, of downs syndrome, autism etc, its obviously much better financially to be older and have a family. aibu to feel its the elephant inthe room regarding rising levels of children with ASD, ADHD, Etc??

I would have been diagnosed with Asperger's in the 80s but it wasn't a recognized condition in the UK at that time. I first heard about it around 2000 I think...

And a lot of my family members are similar. Just before we'd have been classed as weirdo's and no-one would have given it any more thought than that.

Until the contraceptive pill was introduced (1960s?) the majority of women in the UK produced offspring from age 18 and then often spent the next 20 years or so having more.

Are you kidding me?

The fertility rate (average number of children produced per woman) in England was about 2 kids on the eve of WW2, and rose to reach a grand total of..... less than 3 kids per woman by around 1960, then fell after that.

www.closer.ac.uk/data/total-fertility-rate/

The "demographic transition" (move towards smaller families) started in England from the late 19th century onwards, and was actually mostly complete before WW2. (In France the transition started as early as the late 18th century!)

The pill did not have much to do with this, because once pre-1960s people had completed their families, they usually used either the coil or sterilization for contraception, once these were invented (in the Victorian period they used things like sponges and douches to reduce the chances of conception). The pill made premarital sex easier but probably had relatively little effect on fertility rates (some countries like Japan did not take to the pill till very recent times, yet fertility rates had plummeted decades before this).

The average age of marriage has not been 18 in England since the Dark Ages. Average age was about 25 for women and a couple of years older for men in Elizabethen times, fell somewhat in the Industrial Revolution, and actually reached a low point of around 21 only around 1960.

The post-war period was "weird" by the way, because it was this very strange temporary interlude when births by older women became very unusual for a couple of decades. Because women were suddenly marrying at very early ages (by western historical standards), but were having relatively small families, meaning that most had completed their families by 30.

Interesting link to the air pollution -

There's also a possible link with prenatal exposure of the mothers to DDT.

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05994-1
Brown's team found no correlation between the PCB by-product and autism. But when they measured DDT by-product levels in the blood samples, they found that mothers with high concentrations of this chemical — those in the top quartile — were 32% more likely than women with lower DDT levels to give birth to children who developed autism. The likelihood that a child with autism accompanied by intellectual disability was twice as high in mothers with elevated DDT levels compared to those with lower levels.

It's clearly a complex area with lots of research being done currently.

I also don’t think this thread should be deleted

No one can even ask questions nowadays without being shot down.

If you don’t like the op way of thinking. Why not put ahead your way of thinking. Occasionally you can change educate people

Nowadays it all. Oh my god. This is totally wrong. Let’s delete it!!!!!

I think some “pondering” is inappropriate because your idle gossip is someone else’s devastation. There is no search for truth here.

The rise in cases of autism is across the entire spectrum not just “girls who are tricky to diagnose” or “people who would have just been seen as odd”. It’s a HUGE rise and people should be concerned, not least because the infrastructure to support these members of our society is buckling under the sheer numbers.

My eldest DD has got ADHD. I had terrble maternity care through my pregnancy with her in hindsight, I was 20 and spent most of the last 12 weeks of it in hospital with pre-eclampsia that wasn't treated with medication. I also had a 3 day induction and I'm fairly convinced she was oxygen starved during both pregnancy and labour.

Having said that, it wasn't until we met my FIL (long complicated backstory) when DD was around 12 that I found out DH has also got ADHD and was medicated quite heavily as a child in order to attend school. DH's mum had passed away many years before I met DH, so no one ever filled in the story of his childhood. Now I understand a lot of his behaviour better.

So I'm now fairly convinced that with our DD, it is part genetic and part birth related. Certainly not my age - the only factor in that is that I wasn't confident enough to stand up for myself, something in my 40s I'm more than able to do!

because your idle gossip is someone else’s devastation

Precisely.

You get an automatic BU to dare to link any neurodiversity to MMR.

How dare you. Disgusting.

i have an asd child i had at 22, its interesting isnt it? like i said earlier, i was a teen mum, nobody has any issue on here and irl being incredibly ageist and judgmental towards teen mothers do they? when actually biologically we cope better with labour etc, but ask a question on here about older mothers and everyones super offended and its terrible?

Growing up, there were no "obviously" (in a behavioural sense) autistic children in our primary school, and literally one child in our secondary school. We had a special assembly to prepare us (a school of 1200 pupils) for his arrival...and to explain his "strange behaviour" to us. These days there are one or two children with the so called "strange behaviour" of that boy in nearly every class at both of my children's primary schools. In dd1's class there is a child who has aggressive outbursts and throws tables/chairs around the room. In dd2's school there is a boy who regularly pins down younger kids and kicks them hard. He doesn't get punished "because he is autistic", but now has a minder who observes and intervenes. In dd1's old school there was a boy in her class who caused regular class evacuations due to his aggressive behaviour. Again, autistic. None of these kids have particularly "older" parents.

One issue with diagnosis of ASD is that the whole spectrum is lumped under one umbrella, so children with Aspergers who would maybe have flown under the radar in the past are now included. Children with ADHD are (rightly or wrongly) sometimes included.
However, I'm not convinced it's simply awareness of autism that has led to the increase of diagnoses. I suspect it's partly due to a recategorization of milder spectrum disorders that previously weren't considered "autism", but now are...but also there are more children with autism now than there used to be. I never heard of any children throwing tables and chairs or having aggressive meltdowns in all my 14 years of schooling.

DH works in a school for autistic children and he doesn't think there are particularly older parents among them.

It's not so much about what you said but the uninformed way you offered it up for speculation.

There is quite good evidence that the likelihood of things like ASD and schitzophrenia goes up with older fathers. Older mothers are mosly linked with the increased risk of trisomies (but these are not going up, because most older mothers screen and those who have a positive result usually terminate).

thanks for all the sensible posts, it is potentially more paternal age i imagine,

I have 2 with autism. I was 26 when one was born and 31 when the other was born. My ex is 10 years older than me, so 36 and 41. He also has a son from his first marriage who has autism, he was 23 when he was born, his ex 21.

I am currently being assessed for autism myself, and will most likely be diagnosed this month. The psychologist has also suggested I have adhd (my youngest has adhd as well) and I'm pretty sure my ex is on the spectrum - I thought that long before I even thought I might be.

My child and ASC and ADHD and I had him
at 23. I think this is more to do with genetics than anything else as we have lots of ASC on my side of the family and we have ADHD on both sides of the family.

I only had one ultrasound as there were concerns about the safety of them at the time.

If you’re not ‘condeming’ older mothers, what are you doing? What do you hope to achieve here?

Surely it’s due to a number of factors such as much greater ability to diagnose such conditions and a greater subsequent understanding?

For example, my disabled brother has the same disability, but it has been labelled several different things in his lifetime. It began just as ‘handicapped’, then became ‘spastic’ now it’s it’s just ‘cerebral palsy’. He hasn’t changed, the medical world and diagnostic processes have.

Do you have any clinical studies that you’ve read which have prompted your mindset?

I never heard of any children throwing tables and chairs or having aggressive meltdowns in all my 14 years of schooling

Because they either didn't attend (persistent truancy), were homeschooled, went into exclusion all day every day (e.g., isolation) or went to a special school whereas now there are more autistic children in mainstream schools.

I think there are multiple factors feeding into this issue

We had at least one furniture thrower at my school 30+ years ago. Looking back I wonder if it was ADHD but obviously then he was 'naughty'.

YABU - I was 23 when I had my eldest, my DH was 26. He has high functioning ASD/Aspergers. It's nothing to do with parental age. I, however, have traits of HF ASD myself, so wouldn't dismiss saying that genetics may play a part in it.

I also work with children with learning disabilities, and a lot of mums are younger than me, so clearly a lot younger than 35 when their DC were born. Definitely don't think you could blame the age of the parents.

Stop blaming mothers for everything

I think the chemicals we put on food will turn out to be affecting us. Big Pharma rules though, and glyphosate is still used, though now banned for home use and banned in some EU countries I believe, though still used on farms here.

staydazzling
I can only speak for myself and say I'm not offended by discussing any research finding about any potential link to autism.

I'm irritated and and frustrated by your decision to pick a single aspect and start a discussion focused on your opinion about that one element.

There must be a reason for you choosing this aspect and why you focused on what you think rather than opening a discussion about autism more generally. But only you know why you did so.