AS: Hereditary or other factors?

Post Reply New Topic

Hi, I am the parent of an AS child. I have been told that the most common cause of AS is hereditary, but I cannot really see any specific AS in either sides of the extended family. My son had a really difficult birth which involved a lot of pressure on his head and a vonteuse delivery (50+ hours labour, OP deflex position). I often wonder if this had anything to do with his AS, and I have also read that this is often a factor in other autistic people. So, I thought I'd run a poll on this. Feel free to add any comments on causes of AS in the posting thread.

My dad is an undiagnosed aspie. i believe it is hereditary.

I chose difficult delivery because I wouldn't come out and ended up being C-sectioned.
However, while I don't think anyone else in my family (that I know) has AS, I believe my father and brother might show the odd trait. Perhaps BAP? I don't think it's even enough for that.
I do have one cousin about whom I would like to know... but I haven't properly seen him in years, save at one occasion.

Me too. I didn't turn upside down.

I don't know if my dad's an aspie, and my uncle (his brother) has some traits like very intense interests and a whole lot of eccentricity, but I would'nt put my hand in the fire and say he's an aspie either.

I fit all of the three listed below.

My father is an aspie (he'll never get a dx (too stubborn), but it's extremely clear), one of my uncles, on reflection, is probably one, and my grandfather is as well. My mother ended up having an emergency C-section with me, because she had induced labor for 24 hours (two weeks after she was due; she started contractions for a bit, but then stopped quickly), and nothing happened.

I think, at least for me, it's genetic. It runs through my family, obviously.

multiple answer

I'm adopted so I don't know about my own family but both my husband and I seem to be Aspies (he had developmental delays, I'm more classic Aspie) and our son is autistic. I don't know if my actual birth was difficult but I was given last rites and baptized when I was born, I was in bad shape. My son's birth was difficult (induced early, got stuck in birth canal, heart rate slowed way down, 6 nurses in the room) but he didn't stay in the NICU and was otherwise a healthy baby.

We suspect others in my husband's family have autistic traits and there was a schizophrenic relative.

I would have picked these 2 choices
Other people in my immediate (parents, brothers/sisters) family have AS
Other people in my extended (aunties/uncles, cousins, grandparents) family have AS
I strongly suspect my dad having aspie traits, I did get my younger sister to do the long aspie test but surprisingly she is just borderline. I also suspect several cousins of having aspergers but I rarely talk to them.

Multiple answer for me as well...i have people in my family on both sides who exhibit signs...most immediately my mom exhibits alot of AS tendancies, and i seem to get alot of my traits from her.......and then a few people on my dad's side..though they are more of the scientific/technical/mathematic/engineer variety...I wish I had a bit more of that...instead it seems I am more deficient in those fields....

My birth was uncomplicated, as in it did not take long when it finally happened, but I was born supposedly a month late and pulled out by forceps.

Growing up, I had so many headaches and sensitivites, and mood swings and developmental issues and troubles in school...for a while we just blamed it on the forceps....and the lousy school system.... with all those brain-fogging flourecent lights and whatnot..

Last edited by poopylungstuffing on 03 Apr 2008, 7:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I heard (in a book called Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into Autism... by Paul Collins) that you can map the chances of having an aspergers child by the number of engineers, mathematicians or artists on the family tree...

My mom is an artist, and exhibits alot of ASish behaviour

My dad has been an artist, a musician AND an engineer...and is not exactly NT

My dad's brother is an artist/architecht/engineer/musican
My dad's dad was a chemical engineer first for standard oil and then exxon...he also worked in the field of building....
My dad's dad's dad was an architecht who had a patent on a house made entirely of concrete.
My dad's dad's sister was also an architecht...NT, but very OCD
My dad's dad's brother was most likely HFA....or AS....always very odd...never married..obsessively collected things...I am not sure what kind of career he had...he spent several years in reclusion..

My mom's mom was very NT.
My mom's dad was very quiet and mathematicly oriented.

Of my one sibling and all of my cousins, I am the only one that I know of who has AS-ish traits.
I did have a younger cousin (my dad's brother's son...no longer with us ) who might also have possibly been something of an aspie...but that is only in theory......

I come from a long line of ADD

That's an interesting history, thanks for sharing!! In my family lots of artists and engineers as well, and musicians yes - I think that’s related too. I'm also the only one among many NT cousins. The engineers in my family tree seem NT, they did not seem reclusive and had abundant families and such but as its in the past its difficult to say. In the past (and in different cultures) it is much easier to be quiet and so forth, its more of a virtue. North America is a very outgoing society. Like I heard an educational speaker once marvel at how there’s no such word in many Asian languages for learning disability - it doesn’t exist there. Well it does, as do developmental disabilities and I can't decide if the lack of recognition is more a flaw or a virtue. Its a flaw if its hidden away in secrecy, but it may also be because the typical qualities that an asperger student exhibits are actually exemplary behaviors to other cultures.

But I digress... I’ll post some passages but separately so you feel no obligation to read them if you don’t want to.

Re: Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism by Paul Collins.

It was an excellent book, very literary and finely written: Here are a few quotes, much condensed from Chapter 7:


“…many English speakers began to understand that autism included a whole spectrum of permanent outsiders, some so well adapted that they scarcely realized they had been autistic all along. Rather than helpless primal causalities, Asperger insisted, autists were talented eccentrics living among us, albeit in a sphere of their own. A number were brilliant’ many were also solitary and friendless. But Asperger had watched in amazement as some of his early cases flowered into mathematicians, engineers, chemists, and musicians – they were, he marveled, “usually in highly specialized academic professions, often in very high positions, with a preference for abstract content.” …..

This question (about the origin of autism) has haunted autism research from the very beginning. Bettelheim, of course, blamed the parents. Asperger’s gaze also fell upon the family, though from a different angle. Lost in a long silence after the Allied bombing of Vienna was a remarkable observation made near the end of Asperger’s 1943 thesis, one whose import was not fully recognized for decades: “We have been able to discern related incipient traits in the parents or relatives,” he wrote, “In every single case…” So if shadowy precursors of autism can be seen in an autist’s family –if it shapes their very minds and talents – what might you expect to find? Perhaps men whose solitary pursuits, deep focus and fascination with logical systems was matched only by their social awkwardness?

“The paradigm occupation for such a cognitive profile, “ Dr. Baron-Cohen has theorized, “is engineering.”

When one thousand British parents of autistic children were then surveyed, the children proved to have fathers working in engineering at double the national rate. Science and accounting – solitary professions requiring deep focus and abstraction n- showed even higher multiples in autistic families, and artist s were represented at nearly quadruple the normal rate. When Baron-Cohen and other researchers narrowed their focus to the highest echelon of academic talent – that is, to students here at Cambridge – science majors had autism in their families at six times the rate of literature students.”….(he then goes into pages of case studies, cultural examples etc…)


"We've been looking to extend the engineering study into the tendency toward systemizing among the autistic and their families,” he says as he sits down. “This encompasses a range of activities, as well as professions like engineering.” It means file clerks and accountants. It means puzzle fanatics and musicians. It means the autistic prodigy in theoretical physics, who patiently explained to Baron-Cohen and this team that “my mind is like a digital computer: it is either on or off. Information is either true or false. Other people’s minds are like analog computers, with smoothly varying voltages, and manifesting fuzzy logic.” And it means that boy’s father, a plane spotter who can list the entire contents of his own enormous record collection… as well as the lyrics….

”There is one constant refrain we hear from people diagnosed in adulthood.” He leans forward. “They might feel it changes nothing to know now. But they always say this to us: “I wish I had known when I was young.”…. (more pages... then a lovely interlude about the many, intricate parts of technology and science that make up our world which no single human can understand yet we navigate through...)

“….We are hapless generalists stranded in a specialist world, and we just muddle through because it’s best that way, it’s easiest.” I glance across the aisle: The producer is still taking notes, and did you know? I don’t understand how the hell TVs work, either.

I look down at the piece of paper torn out of my notepad…and quietly list out the occupations of Morgan’s immediate male relatives, plus his parents. Science, art, and math: the autism trifecta. Apparently we have been walking around with the genetic equivalent of a KICK ME sign.”

I don't know my dad's side that well, but my mom's side is full of engineers. And there's music on both sides, too. Oddly enough, I'm an artist and a musicican studying to become an engineer. I know something is up with my dad, I don't know if it's AS. And I've always suspected my grandfather.

No one in my family has been diagnosed with AS, however at least some of them had some traits. I suspect my great aunt (now dead) may have had it based on what I've heard about her. Actually she seemed to be almost a carbon copy of me in personality.

My parents have a few traits it seems like. Also bipolar disorder runs in my dad's side of the family. One of his cousins is diagnosed as that and he's also a professor of sociology (or at least was, since he stopped taking his meds). I'm about to get my degree in sociology hmm...that's very little to go on though.

One of my mom's brothers (now dead) was supposedly an oddball. She said he was way out there. Hmm...

Anyway if any of these relatives were still alive I probably would have been able to examine their behavior more closely. Since they're not though, I can only speculate.

There were some mentally diverse people in my family, that I can at least be certain of.

My father; I spoke of him to an ASD specialist, and she said I got it from him, just in a more severe form. This is common.

My birth was fine; I had the big ASD head (not everyone with an ASD has such, but it's a statistically worthy percentage). Some speculate that our brains grow too quickly, too early, and this is what causes the symptoms.