Sorry to intrude but I thought many of you ladies might find this interesting

[CoteDAzur]

From The New York Times:

Father's Age Is Linked to Risk of Autism and Schizophrenia

Thanks. The theory that the age of the father was a factor in autism has been around for a while, but the study was interesting. I'm pretty sure there's a genetic predisposition in my exH's family but he was an older father as well (well, 34) having DS2. Maybe the 2 coincided. His dad was an older father, too. 40 when exH was born and 36 when my 'eccentric' BIL was born.

I have always thought this sounded likely certainly in my own situation as dp is much older and we have two dc with ASD.

How about turning it on its head and postulating that autism is probably hereditary, and that autistic people learn the social skills more slowly that they need to form relationships, so they are more likely to be older when they become parents......

You can make statistics say anything.

I like that lola

The research is about the genetic mutations which increase steadily and can be directly traced to paternal genetic material though, not just about statistics.

I know several families with large numbers of children and it's the younger ones (so born to older father) who have ASD. The older children were completely NT.

Doesn't work for us as DH was in his twenties when ds1 was born. But wouldn't be surprised if it was the case for some (autism not being one condition blah blah blah!)

Paul Whiteley writes a really interesting blog and his post yesterday was about this paper although I thought the most interesting thing in that post was the suggestion from a different paper that the increase in autism is a real increase.

I was 2 months short of my 41st when I had DS and DH would have been 37 (hes my toy boy:)) When DD was born he was 33 and me 36yrs and she is querky/eccentric but thats it.