What are your parents like?

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It seems to be the case that individuals with ASD often have parents that exhibit similar autistic traits. It also seems to be the case that a higher than average amount of parents of autistic individuals are highly educated and have "professional" careers, e.g. scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc.

So what are your parents like?

My biological parents are pretty opposite of each other and (likely for that reason) divorced when I was a toddler.

My dad is very stoic and traditional. He was born and raised in Sierra Leone and immigrated to the United States as a young adult. He worked various odd jobs until he was able to put himself through college and eventually medical school. He is now a medical doctor. (As anyone with hard-working immigrants will tell you, this is a story I hear pretty often from him.) In his relaxation time he mostly watches the news or classic American films. He's kind of socially awkward sometimes but I don't think he realizes it. He is very rigid about his religious views. I have a hard time connecting with him a lot of the time, but I still look up to him.

My mom is very emotional. She was born and raised in the United States. She has a lot of common sense but she did not graduate high school (although she did later get her GED). She is a lot more laid back and open-mined than my dad and generally easier to talk to. She wears her heart on her sleeve and is emotionally vulnerable. I actually think she may be bipolar but she hasn't been tested for it. She makes a lot of poor life decisions and has trouble accepting responsibility for her actions. I worry about her.

I see a lot of myself in both of them -- or, rather, a lot of their personalities have poured into me -- yet I'm definitely very distinct from them in many ways.

Well, I'm from England, both my parents were born here - although my father's parents were not. Neither of them have any qualifications.

My father is functionally illiterate, has a lot of trouble connected with people in an emotional manner, including myself. He had a speech delay in childhood, his sister who is three years younger than him and was several months premature started speaking fluently before he had uttered his first word. He didn't speak until he was six and still has some problems verbalising now. He has a very good memory. He's only ever had one romantic partner, my mother, and has a very hard time keeping his menial jobs because he has somewhat debilitating anxiety (that he's very bad at noticing) and a blood disorder which causes anaemia, so he's often ill and the kind of jobs he does do not tolerate absence. He only really has one interest that I can think of, boxing. I'm not really sure if he has any others. He has a problem with alcohol dependency. My mother thinks that it's likely he also has autism. I think it's possible, but I don't know him well enough to make a judgement either way. My mother almost definitely does not understand ASD well enough.

My mother hasn't had a job since 1989-ish. She was diagnosed with Bipolar type 1, and has psychotic features. She has poor impulse control which damages her relationships with others. She has a poor grasp of what is expected in a typical social situation, but this appears to be a result of an abusive home life in childhood, with a mother who understands but doesn't care for concepts like 'politeness' except when others are interacting with her. She has a serious problem with substance abuse, namely heroin.

I do not feel particularly similar to either of them. Except, I share my father's extremely good memory and I look a lot like both of them.

My parents are long gone now, but they were both openminded, softhearted and caring. They were both quiet believers, but they didn´t have me babtised, because they wanted me to choose for myself.
My father was very sensitive and basically an introvert, mathematical thinker, but he was, in fact, very social and loved his work as a human resource manager. In his spare time he loved to garden, maintain the house, build things and chat with the farmers in the area, and go hunting, or just enjoy nature. He had a boat made and took up professional fishing for a few years, until his boat sank one winter.
He was profoundly artistic, but had been discouraged in school, so he only made a few drawings and little figures, but he participated energetically in my mothers projects. When he was hospitalized with a stroke and went aphatic, the staff saw him support other patients in a very professional manner. Respect!

My mother was unusual. Very creative and ought to have been a professional artist working with textiles. Instead she restored antiques. She was lucky to have been a child of an artistic couple (grandfather was a painter and a school teacher), so she was encouraged to make her own things and was provided with proper materials. She was a system builder as well.
At school she didn´t care to learn the normal mathematical rules, but created her own and came up with correct answers, - like Einstein and she disliked schoolwork, but having sort of photographic memory, she did brilliantly at exams.
Yet she always had problems: A strong anxiety right from childhood. As a child she spoke so slow, that she was ridiculed in shops. She was very analytical and had an ability to make anything with her hands, but her gross motor skills often seemed a bit unstable. She frequently had a distant gaze, so I thought, she wasn´t paying attention (often she wasn´t) and having a conversation with her could be like trying to manage a bag of fleas.
Like yours truly she was labeled falsely all her life and felt like a failure, - but during my own search, I have realized, that she must have been a very high functioning aspie with ADHD.

I too see strong aspects of both of them in myself, - of course

Both my parents are very different from me in many ways.

They are both socially comfortable and have friends. Not that they are extremely social, but they are well liked. I don't think they have autism/AS. They are very normal good people.

Neither of them is particularly highly educated, but I know they are not stupid. It's just that they were not in a very educational environment when they were young.

My father is very good at water painting. He has water painting friends and sometimes holds an exhibition with them. My mother has always been a very competent housewife. She also plays tennis every week with different groups of friends. She's had a habit of spending a lot of time on computer card games etc.

I think my autistic traits come from my father's side though my father himself is nothing like that. My two uncles (my father's brothers) sounded like me. My aunt (my father's sister) sounds like me, too. They are (were) all loners, eccentric, "selfish" and disliked. I don't know how it skipped my father.

I'm fairly certain my dad has AS. My mom doesn't understand me and she can really annoy me sometimes, but she's working on understanding my disorder. I've only been diagnosed two weeks ago.

My father developed ADD-like and AS-like traits and tics after a meningitis he had when he was 6.
I learned to speak and walk a lot later then other children.
He was put in a special class during elementary and middle school because he had issues with school, in fact he quit school when he was 13.
He immediately started working as after that, therefore he was kinda forced to learn social behaviours and how to work (even though he did in his own way).
He's the living proof that you can work even if you don't have an education.
Also, he was very stubborn and never gave up. He's a very strong person.
He was diagnosed as a young adult with oppositional defiant disorder with "schizoid features".
Now he's quite well-functioning, also he is very punctual to appointments, but he is very forgetful and destracted.
He works with trains and cars now, that have been his life-long interest.

My mother was born in a very poor family, and she left home when she was 15 to look for work.
She immediately found it, because she was very intelligent and never gave up.
After my brother was diagnosed with childhood disintegrative disorder she developed severe depression, but never gave up, and after many years she came out of it.
She is still depressed, but her depression is no more as severe as it was before.
She doesn't display AS-like traits.

My father is similar to me, and my mother is introverted and obsessive.

My dad shows plenty of aspie traits similarly to me. When I first got diagnosed, I blamed everything on him, that I had picked up his inflexible traits to the extent where my peers wouldnt put up with me. He's very conservative, works at home, has 1 friend of his own, mostly my mom runs the social stuff of the family. So they might socialize as a couple with other couples kinda thing. Highly scheduled, unflexible, doesnt like the unexpected, doesnt read into implications very well. My and my dad are probably similarly mild aspies however some of our difficulties differ. He's not able to read between the lines very well, and likes to stick to a rigid schedule. I'm able to read between the lines better and be less rigid. Whereas he's able to greet, make small talk and less prosopagnosia problem then I do. I suck at greeting and recognizing people so I find it very difficult to make acquintances.

My mom is also very conservative, not as rigid as my dad. Shes clearly NT. She used to think I was just like her which is not true at all. She was very shy when she was young, grew up in immigrant family so she didnt always know the social rules very well either when she was young. She picked them up as a young adult. She thought, I'd do the same however, she has a hard to getting my struggles. Whenever she tries to relate herself to my situation, it just doesnt match due to the difference in neurologies. She has plenty of friends, does women club stuff, relates well to other women, etc. So she thought I'd do the same. She encouraged me to hang with other shy asian girls and that again didnt work well for me. I find the shy girls boring for the most part.

My father was in the Air Force as a mechanic, but his foot was ran over by an engine and he was given an honorable discharge. He attended vocational school for car mechanics and had a master mechanic license, but never worked in a garage. He held jobs as a pizza deliveryman and factory worker till he became disabled from working an old machine from WWI where he was the only one who could work it well (though it required 3 people, he was the only one sent to operate it). He is very intelligent and has skill with machines and fixing appliances and wiring, but he never did well in school or with jobs. He can probably tell you what make/model/year a random car part is from. He doesn't enjoy social settings or eating out, or large crowds in general. I suspect he may have ASD. His father and siblings show signs of ASD and Schizoid, with a few diagnosed. His father alone did not drive till he was 40, had intense interests in nature, and had troubles in social settings among other things.

My mother dropped out of school and later got her GED. She has been married 5 times and has held jobs as a waitress, cashier/consultant, and tried to open her own business once. She has a thyroid disorder and has to be on medication and believes in a lot of new age/supernatural things. She tends to take "flight" vs "fight" when she runs into problems. She isn't very attached to people, such as her family, and tends to be very spontaneous with life-changing consequences. I suspect she may have a schizoid disorder or it could be due to the thyroid problem. Her family doesn't seem to have a history of disorders from what I can perceive.

I haven't been diagnosed yet, but my therapist has given me a referral to a psychologist in order to take an evaluation and diagnostic for ASD.

My mother is one of the nicest and smartest people I know. She is often shy, quiet, and an introvert, and she's never had a lot of friends. She gets along well with her co-workers and her family members, though.

My father tries to be a good father, I think, but he doesn't realize certain things about the world that I do, and I don't think he understands me very well. I don't know him as well as my mom, as he spent more time at work. He was in the military until he retired a couple months ago. My mother was in the military until she had my sister and me - then she quit. In fact, they first met each other because of their jobs. They've been divorced for the past couple years.

Parents divorced when I was 3 yrs old.

My father died 25 yrs ago at age 43 in a boating accident, but I don't remember him having any AS qualities. In fact, he used to get so frustrated because I would rather stay home and read or watch Star Wars rather than go out on the boat. He was more of an "outdoors man," fishing, hunting, not particularly well-educated.

My mother is grace and refinement personified, and I did NOT inherit that. She is a social butterfly and helps me through social situations and lets me know which clothes go together and things like that. Her father, my grandfather, was never dx with AS but I would bet anything that he had it. They just didn't dx AS for people born in 1919.

My grandfather, my youngest son, and I all had (he recently died) the same inappropriate sense of humor, laughing at things we should not, or enjoying someone's reaction at a practical joke. He did not have a brain-to-mouth filter and said whatever came to mind at the time, no matter who was around. I think my son and I got it from him or something.

My dad is a workaholic. He makes an effort to spend time with the family but work is priority. When we go on holiday he's on the phone about 30% of the time with someone about work. His 2nd priority is my mom. In his eyes she is never wrong. Having said that he's the most rational person with matters that don't involve work or my mom.
My mom is 1/4 American. She's extrememly irrational. She used to look down at me for being "the failure child" but now that I've surpassed my older brother in pretty much everything she sucks up to me and tries to bribe me all the time with expensive and useless gifts.

Both are in denial of my diagnosis, and also the fact that my brother used to abuse me.
Quite frankly I'd like to get away from them both ASAP.

Both of my parents might be considered introverts, but it could partly be a cultural thing as we are from the "Bible belt" of my country.

My mother is a warm mother and grandmother (i.e., nothing like Leonard's mother on the Big Bang Theory), but is not easily excited, and has a slight fascination for counting and calculations.

My father is a retired engineer (and just the other day I read an article on AS which mentioned a discussion by Baron-Cohen et al. (*) on whether autistic people had more engineers in their families). He has always been quite a handyman (unlike myself) and does chores very efficiently. He is not very chatty, but he did teach me chess and programming when I was a child. He stims a bit, especially when talking on the phone. He had a brother who was a bit eccentric and was mentioned by several of my family members independently when I brought up my own diagnosis (although he was never diagnozed with anything AFAIK). My daughter says my father and I explain things in a similar fashion.

(*) Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Scott, C., Bolton, P. & Goodyear, I. (1997), "Is there a link between engineering and autism?". Autism, 1, (1); 101-109.