Should you have kids if you have ADHD or Autism?

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Supposedly at least this is what I remember from what I read somewhere, the inherited form of Autism tends to be the higher functioning one.

I think there should've been an "it depends on the individual" answer choice. So I answered no, because that is what I personally feel for my own situation. But that is not to say that I think other people with ASD or anything else shouldn't have children.

I said maybe - but I'm leaning on the no side. I don't want my kids to go through the trials and tribulations I went through. I want them to be social. I want them to have friendships. I want them to go to a first-rate university, not some craphole school like where I'm at now. I want to have relationships. I feel them becoming aspies or auties will not only make them a thorn on my side and everyone else they touch, I feel the world has way too many aspies and auties around and I don't want me and my future wife to contribute towards that count. Maybe if society is more welcoming of aspies and people on the spectrum then maybe but I don't think that's happening soon. Pretty soon, Autism Speaks will get access to Comcast's war chest so I think the world's only going to get worse for us.

I want them to be a real human, not like a humanoid Prius or a robot in a human package.

They say that "designer babies" will be available soon...

Actually, many people with severe disabilities can and do have children all the time and do quite well as parents. First off, being unable to take care of oneself does not mean being unable to take care of someone else. The tasks involved are different. Second off, the physical aspects of taking care of a child can be done by someone else, the same as if a parent is quadriplegic. A parent who is unable to handle the physical aspect can frequently handle the emotional and cognitive aspects. This is done all the time and is not a terrible thing as long as there are others (spouse or relatives usually, but some places even provide services from outside staff who can do the physical aspects and support a person in doing the cognitive and emotional and social aspects as needed). The main issue is whether the person can handle the responsibilities, and while being autistic may cause problems there, you can't predict from a linear model of "severity" whether a person can do so or not. There are people who need assistance with everything physical but who could raise children quite well as far as communicating with them, discipline, emotional needs, advocating for them, etc. And there are people who are quite independent by most standards who would be capable of the physical needs but crap at everything else who might be a horrible parent. I really don't like some of the assumptions I'm seeing on this thread that if an autistic person can't do Thing X then they cannot possibly be a good parent, it's simply never that simple.

As far as the main question goes, I believe that absolutely yes we can have children if we think we're up to it. It's a moot point for me since I don't know that I'm fertile (my periods have all but stopped). But I've thought about it and eventually decided against it, but not because I'm autistic. It should be any person's choice to have kids unless they're proven to be a horrible child abuser. But the reality is that nobody is really prepared for children until they have them, and autistic people are no different, and not necessarily better or worse than any other group of people as parents. My family personally has a long history of autistic parents on both side, some good and some bad.

As for the question of passing it on, that kind of thing irritates me. I mean of course it's any individual's choice. But time and time again it's been shown that someone's level of happiness in life is unrelated to their impairments. If it were related to impairments, and especially if it were related to conventional notions of severity of impairments, I ought to be one of the unhappiest people here, but I'm not.

As I've pointed out many times on threads like this, I have a very long list of conditions (both cognitive and physical, some health-related, some pain-inducing), some of which are progressive, and live most of my life these past few years in bed and much of the time unable to form language or ideas or make sense of my environment in anything resembling a typical way. And even if these conditions were life-threatening (which some would be if untreated), and I were to die an early death tomorrow, I would be happy to have been here and would not want someone to have decided that the possibility of a child like me meant they didn't want children. I see so many unhappy people here who have nearly everything that supposedly creates happiness in the world, and it's obvious that happiness is not all about whether you have the house, car, girlfriend, middle-class job, and all that, nor about whether you can speak, walk, have endurance, or think about complex ideas. And yet people insist that not having those things must always make you unhappy and that those things (or as many of those things as possible) are necessary to happiness. Simply not true. In fact, my life is a perfect refutation of that in many ways because (for reasons unrelated to each other, mostly) I've had a steady increase in happiness throughout my life and a steady decrease in various abilities that most people see as important to happiness. If these abilities caused happiness, then wouldn't my level of happiness have gone the other way around? Generally when you lose abilities, there can be a relatively brief period of mourning or adjustment, and then you go back to as happy or unhappy as you were before (and sometimes slightly happier for reasons that aren't fully understood). In my case, I rarely mourn anymore because I'm used to losing things, and while losing things doesn't make me happier, other things (too complicated to get into) continue to make me happier. Right now I am the happiest I've been in my life.

I do think if I had a child I would be able to guide that child in the ways that matter, even if someone else had to handle the physical care. The truth is that there's nobody, or very close to nobody, in my family who isn't or wasn't what would these days be considered disabled in some way. Many kinds of conditions run in my family, from chronic health conditions, to cognitive, to physical, to emotional. Nobody really gets a chance to avoid having them. And to us this is all normal. We don't see it as some kind of burden or curse or anything. It's just one of many parts of who we are. We don't see each other as terrible parents just because some of us can't do certain things. If someone's a terrible parent among us it's about their character, not their diagnosis or severity of that diagnosis. We're quite diverse in these ways and none of us would be here if everyone was freaking out about either their own conditions causing them to automatically be "bad parents" because they can't do something most parents can do, or else freaking out about passing conditions on to children. (And yes, some of the conditions that are hereditary in our family are life-threatening. We deal with it. None of us regrets having had a life at all just because it might be shortened.)

The other thing is, even if you have no family history, you shouldn't have a child at all unless you're willing to deal with severe impairments of some kind. Not all impairments are hereditary in origin (not even all genetic impairments, some are spontaneous mutations). Not everyone has the warning that people with genetic conditions have to prepare for having a child with a particular condition. All kinds of things happen both through fetal development and through life in general to make a person become disabled. And nearly everyone is going to be disabled at some point in their life unless they die young. It'd be better to prepare for that eventuality no matter who you are. And either you or your kid could end up with an impairment for any reason. You have to plan and be prepared for these possibilities if you don't want bad things to happen.

Also people should be aware that we (i.e. most of the world if not all of it, despite individual cultural dfiferences) live in an incredibly ableist society. Many of the attitudes that say better off dead or never born than be disabled, are reflected when people suggest that it'd be better to just not have children, than risk those children having the "horrible" experience of being disabled. And no matter how bizarre it sounds, most problems disabled people face are caused by that ableist society, including the very idea that disability is a private personal matter that always inflicts suffering just by its existence (an idea that contains many, many assumptions, including assumptions about where we get our aspirations and how we handle it when we can't meet them). In a non-ableist society, there would be far less suffering for disabled people, even ones with conditions that inflict actual pain or emotional problems. And you don't get such a society by deciding that it'd be too awful to a child to have them if there's a possibility they're going to be disabled (yes even "severely disabled").

And it's also an aspect of ableism that makes it sound as if you have to have Skill X, Skill Y, and Skill Z in order to be a good parent. Not that there aren't skills involved, but there's much more room for variation than you'd think. Many current societies worship the idea of independence and don't realize that we are all interdependent on each other. Nobody is independent. Nobody should have to be. And parenting is generally meant to be a shared responsibility, with each person doing what they're able to, and there should be help available if a person is not able to do everything (rather than just declaring that person an unfit parent and moving on). When I was growing up both of my parents had various impairments and they were still good parents. My neighbor developed severe MS and lived in a nursing home and was still a good mother. (Note that living in nursing homes is not a consequence of being disabled, it's a consequence of a society where resources are set up in certain ways that have been largely engineered by the nursing home industry. Ideally my neighbor would have continued to live at home with assistance. And actually the way my family handles things, very few people have ended up in nursing homes because family members have been willing to assist them. We seem to have the interdependence thing pretty well down. The assistance often goes both ways, a parent with severe physical issues being aided by, and aiding, their autistic offspring. That's how things are supposed to work, and if family doesn't exist for someone or isn't feasible, there's supposed to be a network of services and support they can get. This is currently available in some areas only but in a less ableist society it would be available everywhere and seen as no different than the services that nondisabled people get when they can't do something that is simply not expected to be a universal ability.)

I've written something very long, and really the first paragraph is the only one that is a reply to the person I'm quoting. I just don't see these things the way a lot of people do, probably because of a combination of factors. My own life, which flies in the face of every standard idea of how disability and happiness are supposed to work. My family, which flies in the face of standard ideas of how disability and parenting are supposed to combine (or not). Having witnessed cultures that look at disability differently from the mainstream culture of the country I live in. And having learned a good deal about the non-obvious but important origins and consequences of disability.

I think yes we should have that option. We are perfectly capable of having and taking care of kids. It would be an insult to say otherwise. I think it should be a personal opinion of whether you want to risk your child having it as well. Again, it's not a bad thing to have it. It's just a completely personal opinion of whether you want them to have it. I don't. I wouldn't want to have kids by my own seed but then again I'm eighteen and.. I shouldn't have to think about that for a while if everything goes right. Maybe I'll change my mind.

I said I don't know (there really should have been a 'depends on the person/circumstances' option...).

I personally wouldn't. My child is at risk of having all sorts of genetic illnesses; AS, TS, AD/HD, OCD, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorder... because I and close family members suffer from many of these conditions. I am not in a position to look after a child, but I don't think even if I do get my own home, a husband, a job etc. that I would be a good mum. My Mum, who I must add I love very much, suffered severe depression throughout the majority of my life. It caused me and my 'NT' (I say that because he's got every symptom of ADD) brother a lot of problems growing up. My Mum will quite quickly admit that she wasn't able to cope with 1 and a half (my brother is a half!) special needs children. Some people can, others can't.

I would be one that can't. Because of my moderate-severe Tourettes, I often question why I was born at all. I get depressed and say things like, 'if I was a dog, I would have been put to sleep'. There are times when I am happy, but the pain and suffering outweigh that. I wouldn't be so worried about autism/AS, more about my child having TS. As a TS sufferer I have got a 50% likelihood of passing my TS gene to my kid. If my partner had the gene as well, it would be nearly 100%. I don't think I could pass this illness on to another kid because I would inevetably be on the recieving end of the same questions I often asked my Mum, 'why was I born like this?' and I wouldn't be able to help.

On the other hand, if you think you could cope with an autistic/AS or even NT child, then go for it. There's no law saying we can't procreate so if you feel that maternal instinct, there's no reason to follow it. I am merely stating why I personally wouldn't have a kid, but heck, I don't have a maternal instinct in my body.

it depends on the person really. my sil i'm sure is on the spectrum and so is most of their family, including my daughter. both my daughters father and my sil are/were horrible parents. my daughters father passed away but before he did he thought he was a good father but he wasn't. he never sensored the things he did around her, he got frustrated too easily, couldn't handle doing much with her. all she remember about him was that he yelled alot and never wanted to do anything fun. my sil is even worse. she is barely functional and has herself medicated to the point of being almost useless. she doesn't sensor herself aroung my nephew either and has meltdowns in front of him. she can't focus on doing what is best for him and blames it on 'anxiety'. she has a wicked temper and stays locked in her room most of the time while he roams the house on his own. she usually only comes out to feed him, if that. he is also autistic and the lack of interaction from her caused him to be even further behind than he would have been if she had been a good mom but she thinks she is an awesome parent. it's sad, really. so i'd have to say no, that it might be better for some people to just not have kids even if they think they can do it well. there are nt people like that too though, not just as people. it depends on the level of responsibility the person can handle.

Excellent post, anbuend.

My mother has been seriously mentally ill since before I was born. There have been times ever since I was a child when she would be unable to really be a parent. Sometimes my dad was around to fill that role and sometimes he wasn't, and sometimes I would try to step in and be the one to help and support her, with mixed success. There were other times when my mom was doing fine and was an excellent mother, as good as any mother can be.

I have never wished to have anyone else for my mother. She is the kindest and most self-giving person I know, and as for the times when the illness takes over and she seems like a different person, I learned to understand what's going on and not to take it personally. Those difficult times have also helped me to grow as a person who cares about other people and wants to be of service if I can.

People get lost in ideas and theories and statistics, but the reality is that people are individuals and we simply cannot make such generalizations. There may be some people with autism, mental illness, ADHD etc, who should not have children - but it is not because they are autistic, mentally ill, or have ADHD, rather it is because of their particular personality and circumstances.

I voted "yes" for having children. I have Asperger's---so what? My youngest son, like me, was diagnosed with Asperger's. And my oldest son shows many Asperger's traits. How are we (my wife and I) doing? We're doing fine---we are very happy and wouldn't want our children any other way. And both of our sons are very happy.