To think autism gets worse with each generation

[eastereggg]

Genuine question.

Why does it seem that autism gets worse with each generation?

Example: a mother is a late diagnosed autistic but her child is very clearly autistic and displays much more severe characteristics than she did. The grandmother would probably be diagnosed autistic today as well.

There seems to be a recurring pattern that I'm seeing where autism is getting more severe with each generation. Is there an explanation for this?

Genuine eugenics question?

Hmm. It's true for my family. Watching with interest as I had no idea this might be a thing.

I’ve noticed that too

Have you researched this or is your question based on a handful of experiences you have had in your life?

Yes i think so

This is also true for me and my children as well as a few of the other parents at my kids ASN school. Autism is such a mystery.

I don’t know shit about eugenics, but I would disagree. There is no pattern in either mine or my DH’s family, just random varying levels of functioning. Mostly undiagnosed. Our DC will probably be the first to be officially diagnosed.

Because people with more severe autism (apologies if that’s worded badly) from the previous generation didn’t have children?

Maybe because society is more keyed up to recognising it and accepting it and masking is less and less necessary as generations have passed. So the characteristics are “allowed” now rather than actually being more prevalent. As a teacher I see this in the classroom and deal with more openly SEN kids now than I did when I started almost 20 years ago, several times as many actually.

This sounds like a case for my favourite phrase: "The plural of anecdote is not data."

What you're saying may be true. It equally may not be true. Unless someone has done an actual scientific study including statistical analysis then there's no reason to conclude one way or another. You also ideally want a casual link.

Editing to add some anecdata: it's not the case in our family.

I'm autistic myself and so are my family

In the past, those who required more support tended to be excluded from mainstream society, put into special schools and then into residential care. They were generally invisible and missed out on milestones like getting married and having children of their own.

Nowadays, we make more efforts to involve those with disabilities in society and families are less likely to hide away children with additional needs.

Although there could very well be other factors at play, such as increasing parental age and various changes to our environment, I suspect a major one is simply a change in visibility.

Is it getting more severe or are we just more aware now? I was not diagnosed as a child but might be if I were a primary school child of today.

This isn’t a pattern I have noticed in our circles. Lots of autism in my career field, we tend to marry other ND people and have ND children. They seem to be just like us, people who do struggle in many ways, but also get huge benefits towards being high achieving from being ASD.

Load of twaddle. Autism is a spectrum.

Lots of autism in my family, all of my nephews and DS2 have an official diagnosis and all present differently, my youngest DN probably the most severe. Going back further there were a great aunt and uncle who were not able to attend school and my DM has several cousins who were quietly put into institutions as family couldn't cope, most of those were non verbal. Current generation is getting a lot more help and is a lot less hidden.

I'm not sure if it does but I suppose one thing to consider is that perhaps someone who has very high support needs, and is more severely affected by their autism may be less likely to go on to have children. So there are unlikely to be as many examples of a parent with severe autism having a child with less severe ASD? Whereas the other way around would happen more often.

In the past, those who required more support tended to be excluded from mainstream society, put into special schools and then into residential care. They were generally invisible and missed out on milestones like getting married and having children of their own.

Just wanted to say this isn’t the case for all those who went to specialist provisions. DH’s sibling went to specialist school, now has a son and is engaged, has a small job. Not fully functioning by neurotypical standards, but still.

Men and women are becoming parents later which increases risk. It wasn’t unusual to have children into your late 30s/40s but you probably would have had lots of other children much younger so the risk is being concentrated in a smaller number of children.

Assortive mating means that people with autistic traits are more likely to partner with each other (for example, young people move to cities and find partners in similar education or jobs whereas before that you would marry someone from your village).

More awareness, very autistic children were often sent away never to be seen again and many others were just seen as “a bit simple”.

There seems to be anecdotal evidence of this in and around silicon valley too. Two clever techy autistic parents and then a more high needs autistic offspring.

My son is autistic and struggles more with regulation than my husband. It could be argued that he's "allowed" to be his autistic self though where as my husband didn't realise he was autistic until my son's diagnosis.

I understand your question but I think it is clumsily put.

I think parenting has changed so much - and ‘gentle’ parenting in particular is far better suited to autistic kids, but also creates a safer environment for autistic kids to unmask.

When I think back to my childhood, it was incredibly strict and one where parenting was largely fear-based. And my dad went to an incredibly strict boarding school so his childhood would have been very regimented. My DC1 is autistic and my dad is also clearly autistic, and I display many traits (but I think I have more of an adhd profile). Much of my parenting strategies are around enabling my child to navigate a world that isn’t well set up for him, and working with his school etc to ensure that he is set up for success. That said, I do think I am quite strict compared to some other parents of our generation and I put greater emphasis on him learning to manage his own feelings than some other parents I see.

I have no idea what this means for society - I think in some ways positive, where adults in the future will hopefully be much more emotionally in tune than previous generations. I do also wonder whether future adults might end up forming an ultimately more individualistic society, with more emphasis on individual adjustment and less on own impact on others - basically a rights vs responsibility thing.

My daughter seems more autistic than me. Tbh I think a lot of her issues were amplified by the school system. It's so different to when I was at school.

I'm not sure that it is true of my dhs family. I would say that ds and dh are similarly affected. The only reason we suspected with ds is that these days people tend to be more educated on the signs of autism. Dh was only diagnosed after seeing himself so strongly in ds. Ds is a high achieving 17 yo with social struggles. Dh is a high achieving 47 yo with social struggles.

I am no expert but would not guess that autism is becoming much stronger in later generations, unless it is influenced by our more unnatural food intake/pesticides/a credit card of plastic a week in food (microplastics). I don't think it really is. What I think the answer is:
-Women mask symptoms much more than men so if you have an autistic mum and an autistic son I would bet that the son would seem a bigger case
-In the olden days you were just an eccentric, or naughty, or weird so it was just brushed under the rug or not diagnosed.
-Nowadays with more awareness and more medical discussion on it and in schools, it is bound to appear as if modern people are all more extreme cases.
-I think this is an inevitable phenomenon of modern understanding and life.
-The only other natural explanation could be that maybe both parents are autistic so the child seems to be further along the spectrum than the parents.
I wouldn't get upset over it, I would say it is modern science and understanding of a side to people that was always there, but was previously called everything from 'possessed' to 'bad child'.

Autism is due to chemicals in the food change? WTF.
Educate yourself.
Autism is linked to inherited genetic mutations that run in families and develops in the fetus and you cannot develop it in later life.
It doesn't just appear.. you are born with it.