Older parents and autism/aspergers

[JamSandle]

To think there is a link between older parentage and autism/aspergers, and if so, should we be doing more to educate and prepare parents for this?

Obviously an increasing number of parents are having their children later in life. Should we be doing more to make them aware of potential risk factors for themselves and their children as part of family planning?

I'm assuming there's a father in there somewhere.

Of course you've taken it personally

As you are one of the posters who said you had yours younger and they have ASD.

Goodness me.

As you are one of the posters who said you had yours younger and they have ASD.

In the same comment where I pointed out older fathers. Give it up. I don't take anything personally. I could t give a flying fuck if there is a link or not but I absolutely did not say it was untrue because I was younger.

I knew there was research suggesting there's an increased risk with older father's.

But a large 2014 study based on Swedish medical records hinted that the odds of autism among children born to fathers older than 45 are about 75 percent higher than for children born to fathers in their early 20s. And a 2010 analysis of Swedish data found that men over 55 are four times as likely to have a child with autism as men under 30.
Even so, the absolute chance of having a child with autism is low even for the oldest parents. The researchers in the 2017 study calculated that about 1.5 percent of children born to parents in their 20s will have autism, compared with about 1.58 percent of children born to parents in their 40s.

www.spectrumnews.org/news/link-parental-age-autism-explained/#:~:text=But%20a%20large%202014%20study,fathers%20in%20their%20early%2020s.

It goes on to cite all things that mean this could be correlation not causation.

I think there's also a greater risk with older father's and schizophrenia in children - but I though in both cases there were huge uncertainties about conditions themselves and everything surrounding that and more research is needed.

I personally think women get enough messages about declining fertility and greater risks of various conditions.

There are too many societal and economic structural reasons leading to older parents - and also decline in overall fertility rates with little political interest in making changes - and default media position is often to blame women and criticise any age they pick - completely ignore men's role in equation and external forces driving decisions.

No one said you did

But you clearly read that comment as if it applied to you.

Goodness me, you're hard work

If they were autistic themselves wouldn't they have clarified that in their posts? Otherwise it would make sense that they had an autistic child at 22, 26, etc, due to the genetic link.

You've taken personal offence to a comment that wasn't even directed towards you and responded to a perfectly innocuous post with arrogance and aggression.

The genetic link does not in any way negate the link with advancing age.

As men age, the number of de novo mutations in their sperm rises dramatically. This has been linked with autism and with other things such as schitzophrenia.

Yes and I recall that the correlation with older fathers is just as strong as with older mothers.

Not going to do the whole “I was only 17 and it happened to me so it’s bs” but I was 40 at his birth, DS is profoundly autistic and I wish with all my heart I’d done my homework before I had him.

I hope greater awareness will lead to proper pre-natal testing and the option for women to terminate if they choose. This is not a life I would have wished on DS, DH or me. It’s killed our marriage and is slowly killing us.

@Grandeur

I did point out I am autistic so any chance of not piling on? It's been said already.

To be fair you started a pile on for that specific poster, so it's only fair that you should be corrected. You want to demand that people "drop the ignorance," perhaps you should drop your arrogance and aggression.

Says the person who started the pile on

Ffs, you can't start shit then cry autism when you don't like people calling you out

No causal link between asd and parental age has been established.

It's one risk factor, but it's not the only risk factor. Family history is the biggest factor. And there's still question marks about so many other issues - maternal thyroid issues, low maternal iron levels, birth trauma...

Prenatal testing for autism would be much more difficult for autism than for things like Downs. That said, they are looking at things like polygenic scores right now. I support the right to early abortion on demand in any case.

Oh fuck me I am out of this bullshit.

Yeh none in his family either...

My husband and I were 24 when my autistic dd was born.
I was autistic. My father and mother were autistic.
What do we notice here?

And you can all roll and shove your eugenics.

As far as I am aware, there is no link with age.

Autism runs through the female line in our family. Those of us with autistic daughters gave birth between 19 and 41.

I think more information on autism in general is a good idea, but until proved otherwise, don't link it to parental age.

There have been plenty of studies linking it with age. A few have been posted on this very thread in fact

I am so sorry for your situation and can understand where you are coming from with the problems you are experiencing.

However, not all autistic people are profoundly autistic. My daughter has been diagnosed as having autistic traits but she is a very clever, very creative girl who is thriving in a mainstream secondary school. Yes, she has had problems due to her autism sometimes, but she has every chance of going on to do well at university and in her chosen career.

We have to be very careful not to think of autism presenting in the same way in every child.

A lot of people on this thread seem really invested in insisting that autism does not correlate with parental age, despite the fact that the evidence looks pretty strong. I am not sure what lies behind the discomfort with this idea.

It’s not as simple as choosing the age to have your children.

people with autism that are going to choose to be parents are not the same as the general population. As a class, we tend to do things just a bit differently. There will be an over representation of highly educated, career focused individuals. Even if partners are secured relatively young, parenthood is going to be delayed to fit in with career with this group. Plus there is a tendency for people to marry other individuals on the spectrum or at least other individuals that have traits that make them sympathetic to people on the spectrum. The genetics are always going to be there, regardless of timing.

There is a reason there are concentrations of children with autism diagnoses in certain regions and it isn’t environment it’s because the local employment creates a concentration of a certain type of parent.

I would never recommend people actively try to create children on the spectrum because many people do suffer, but many of us are very happy with who we are and are leading very successful lives.

They know that autism is genetic in 80-90% of cases. The prevalence of autism in parents over 40 could either be down to parental age being a factor, or that autistic adults are more likely to wait until their 40s to have children.

Many will be defensive, as no one wants to accept their decisions can cause issues in their children.

It's the same as when people post in the conception topic around having children late and get defensive when the risks associated with being an older parent are raised.