Increased stress on woman and autism?

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Do you think the increased stress that society is putting on woman could contribute to the rise in autism? Some studies have correlated maternal depression with autism and there is a great deal more pressure on woman because of work and the media.

I don't know that women are under more stress now than they have been in the past. We have more freedom now, which granted does come with pressure to achieve more than we used to--but there's just as much stress, and probably more, that would have come from knowing that you couldn't pass the societal barriers which used to hold women back.

If there's an effect related to a woman's changing social status and autism, it may well be that we are learning that women can be autistic, too, because the things that we were formerly considered to be incapable of doing (being assertive in a social situation, for example) are now known to be just as possible for a woman as for a man, and when we can't do them, people actually start to think, "Hmm, this kid is having trouble; maybe I should get her evaluated." It's no longer considered practically normal for a woman to be shy, retiring, unable to initiate conversations, express opinions, communicate with people outside her family.

I'm not following you. More pressure on women since when? What sort of pressure?

Pressure "related to a woman's changing social status", evidently. Said social status has been changing for a long while, from women being considered somewhat sub-human and equivalent to children, to being considered useful, to being given the right to vote, to being considered equals. Women still have some problems related to their gender (and so do men, actually), but we've gained a lot of freedom and power in the past hundred years or so. This is a good thing, since those gains in power have mostly served to allow both sexes relatively equal rights. However, when a minority group gains equality, they have to work hard for some time to maintain it. The problem isn't that they're incapable, but that in the past they had fewer opportunities than the majority, which means that in the present they haven't got as many advantages as the majority does.

For example, think of the income gap between black and white Americans that still exists, even though slavery has been abolished for a long time and civil rights for black Americans have been affirmed by law for a shorter time (but still more than a generation). There's nothing about having black skin that makes it harder to succeed; but you're starting out with fewer opportunities, thus you have to work harder. The only cure for it is time. Keep the doors open, and people will work their way toward them, and the gaps start to close. But it still takes work, and there's no way around that. So women today have to work to make up for all that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were forced to miss out on. It's just the scar left on society by the way we used to push each other down.

Is that what you mean, OP? Or something different?

Well,

if you think about how an AS mother feels, then I would guess you could quite easily come up with a conclusion like this.
I wouldnt be too surprised if they wouldnt have studied the "spectral properties" of those mothers as well.

If you would include all women on the spectrum (less affected than AS) which number might very well be much higher than the 1% for official estimates for AS
than you would get through the correlation between depression and spectrum the impression there would be a correlation between maternal depression and autism

any links to those studies?

I think there's more pressure on autistic woman to "pass" and be more social, whereas autistic men can get away with being more eccentric.

There might be a correlation, but I do think it might be more to do with the fact that there a lot of mothers of kids with AS who very probably have many traits themselves. They might get diagnosed with depression, anxiety, etc, without the root cause being investigated. It's not the anxiety of the mother causing a change in the foetus, it's just the way the baby was going to be anyway, due to the genes they've inherited.

Is it:
Depressed pregnant woman --> child with AS == depression in mother causes an effect on the developing foetus

Or:
Woman with depression, due to undiagnosed AS, gets pregnant -->child with AS == child has inherited mother's genes

I think the latter is just as likely as the former, but that's just my thoughts on the matter.

I am an undiagnosed mother of two autism spectrum sons by two different fathers. I have had 3 children altogether. My oldest child is a daughter who seems to be more or less NT, as she didn't have many of the issues my sons and I had/have. I have been diagnosed with depression and ADD. I was severely depressed during each of my pregnancies, almost to the point of hospitalization.