Age of mother-link to autism?

Post Reply New Topic

Thanks, that was interesting.

NOT TRUE! The theory is that a females ova are created with her, mature, and are released over time. So exposure accumulates. A males sperm are created ALL THE TIME, and can degrade over a shorter period, etc... Of course, after a point, they are less viable so they are less likely to make a woman pregnant, and then they are reabsorbed.

ALSO, a womans ova can be very bad and still produce a child but, if there are relatively minor problems with a man, he may be sterile.

anyway, some women over 30 start having a lot of problems, and some men over 70 have had healthy kids.

That said, my mother was about 31, and my father was about 29 when I was born. I believe I have AS. I DEFINITELY have a number of symptoms that are RARE among NTs, but relatively common around people with an ASD. I also had a large vocabulary before most people even learn to talk. My social skills, and coordination(with regard to sports) stink though.

ACTUALLY, a proper C section puts less stress on the child. So it would likely PREVENT problems. Historically, it has been used if a problem was expected(chicken or the egg!), and is now often done with many(so there are so many that such a correlation is pretty meaningless).

My mom was 28 when she had me, and my dad was 29. I do remember hearing that mothers' age is connected with Downs, so maybe that just increases the chance of irregularities in general.

My dad was 35 and my mom was 31 when they had me.

I was 34 when I had dd (and was infertile prior to this pregnancy due to PCOS). She was born via c section at 37 weeks. And I am o negative blood type and had two rhogam shorts (mercury) while pregnant. I believe all of this could be notable with regard to my AS dd.

Both my parents were 26 when they had me. Normal birth, no surprises. But then again, it's easy to trace the AS in my family - it's not like it has skipped any recent generations.

my mom was 24 when she had me so I don't buy that at all.

First of all -- I think both the grandfathers would fall somewhere on the spectrum in our family situation, so to us, our sons on the spectrum seem to be very genetically-based.

Having said that . . . I had ALL C-sections, oldest son was mildly on the spectrum but never diagnosed, daughter was NT, but . . .

my youngest son was taken C-section, but I had been given pitosin and had an allergic reaction to this, and therefore his birth was somewhat traumatic. He had to be taken very quickly, and I was going through anaphylactic shock. I was 36, my husband was 35. First son (mildly on the spectrum) was born when I was 26.

Also, both sons had NUMEROUS ear infections. Because of this, we gave our youngest son prophylactic antiobiotics to prevent the ear infections, and I have always wondered if this had something to do with his symptoms.

Very interesting thread . . .

My mother-in-law is the youghest of 8, her mum was 44, dad 46 when she was born. She was premature or just low weight at birth (they are not sure). She is very aspie-like but managed (with a lot of effort) to work and have a regular life. Both her kids are aspies but born when she was young (24 and 26). My sister-in-law is struggling in life, her daughter (born when she was 36) displays a lot of autistic traits. My husband is a very functional aspie. Except my little nice that was an emergency C-section, the rest of them were born naturaly.

I'm NT and so is my entire family. I had my first child at 20, NT daughter, second at 27, AS daughter. Both very easy, fast births, APGAR 9. My hubby is the same age as me (20 when we had NT daughter, 27 when we had AS daughter). Also in my husband's extended family there are many autistic and aspie relatives. I tend to think is genetic.

I was 28, my husband was 50 when our AS daughter was born. She was an emergency c-section with some complications. I also suffered some trauma to the belly during the pregnancy. We also both have family members with AS traits and/or mental disorders. We also are both inattentive ADD. I am pretty sure I have AS, after researching it for my daughter.

edit to include: we were, obviously, both older when our younger child was born. The younger child appears to be NT.

Last edited by PenguinMom on 14 Feb 2010, 9:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

my mother was 15 years old and my father was 17 years old when i was born.
they both were killed in a motorcycle accident, and i was orphaned and then adopted by my australian parents when i was 2 weeks old.

Wow, it seems like the mother's and dad's birth ages were all over the board. Not sure if there is any link at all!

I believe that the study did actually find a statistical one, but it's more like fiddling with odds, and not absolutes. People become parents at all sorts of ages - that doesn't change with AS. But maybe the way the curve looks does, just a little. I think that is all the original study ever said.

It's also possible that there's a slight correlation because mothers who have children around that age are warned about the increased possibility of abnormalities, so they might be more apt to catch the signs.

Do you know who else noticed this? Leo Kanner. It was in his original work on autism. He noted it anecdotally. It probably stuck out a lot more then because back then far fewer women waited till their mid to late 30's to have a child. Then the average age of first childbirth went up and up and up and up until we got where we are now and there are so many women that have first childbirth >35 that older mothers of autistic children blended in and it didn't seem statistically meaningful until somebody thought to look at it more deliberately.

Unfortunately, I think Leo Kanner's original observation in the 1940's about maternal age may have been the genesis of the Refrigerator Mother Theory. He, or maybe somebody reading his work soon after, had the theory that women who are "cold" will wait until their 30's to have children because actually they don't want them because they have no maternal love to give. In more recent decades, later maternal age has been tied to women wanting to establish themselves professionally but nobody doubts the desire is there (biological clock and all that) so Refrigerator Mother Theory died a welcome death. And I think that Kanners maternal age observations just plain fell off the radar once Refrigerator Mother Theory took hold, even though I think his observations are what inspired that theory.

So I believe there is a correlation though like all correlations it isn't 1:1. There are many, many older women with young children (far more than in Kanner's time) and most aren't autistic. Conversly, there are young women who gave birth to autistic children. But it looks like there is a skew in the data that doesn't emerge anectdotally because it is not obvious but when you look at the data, there is a skew to later maternal age. Kanner himself saw it so I'm not surprised it re-emerged after all this time.