What are the odds of me passing it on to my kid?

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The wife and I have a kid on the way, and we found out just today that it's gonna be a boy. (More boys than girls are Aspies.) My wife suddenly got all worried. She's brought it up before and I'd usually be like "meh, we'll worry about it later" but now we've been talking about it.

I tried to run a search on "heritability" and got a few threads but nothing that precluded me from starting a new thread. I followed a few Wikipedia links and couldn't make heads-or-tales of the genetic technical stuff.

I mean, it's not like a 50/50 coin toss, is it? I'm confused.

my dad was probably an aspie. he had an aspie girl (me) and three NT girls. one of my sisters has an aspie son. three other neices and nephews are unaffected. i don't have kids, so sorry, that's all the little amount of info i can add.

i read somewhere that if you have one child on the spectrum, your odds of having a second are 14%.

I have not seen those stats, either. I will be curious to see if anyone has them.

I think it may be hard to have enough reliable studies because a lot us with kids old enough to be diagnosed, are too old to have been diagnosed as children ourselves, because of when it first entered the DSM.

They may not have good data until more spectrum folks in your generation have kids and those children are old enough to be diagnosed. A lot of us older parents knew we were different but didn't know what we "had" until after we had our autistic kids.

That said, it is not good for your wife to be worried while pregnant. Until you get the stats you want, I would try to reassure her, that "spectrumy" traits may be challenging, but there are many endearing aspects, and she must think so, too since she married an Aspie.

Even, if you had stats, they probably would not tell you much about severity, and that is probably what she is worried about, right?

Unfortunately, when you are pregnant-- books, magazines, the Internet all seem to be teeming with scary things to worry about. The best you can do when you are pregnant, is to avoid the obvious hazards, follow doctor's instructions, and relax.

Congrats, on the baby-to-be, by the way!

Congratulations.

As the others have said, please don't worry about it. I also note that you're extra worried because the baby is a boy. The jury is still out on whether AS is more prevalent in boys anyway. Many people think it's just under-diagnosed in girls (and that's what I truly believe too). So, I don't think your chances are higher, just because you know for sure it's a boy. In any case, it's impossible to tell what your child might be like.

I'm with ASDMommyASDKid on this one too. Many of us are of an age that we would never have been diagnosed with AS as a child. We only realised we might be on the spectrum, due to our children being identified or diagnosed. It's not all bad either. My daughter is a lot of work, that's undeniable. But, the highs are amazing and she has many positives, which I doubt would have been present, had she not been on the spectrum.

I worry about her, but everyone worries about their kids, no matter what. And there are some things I worry much less about than other parents. I'm not particularly concerned about peer pressure or my daughter getting into the wrong sort of company. OK, she's only 6 and I don't know what kind of teenager she's going to be. I'm not complacent, but STDs, teenage pregnancy and drugs are a bigger concern for my peers than they are for me (especially if she takes after Mummy).

There's another plus side to your story. If your child does have an ASD, they will be identified very young. As you are so clued up on the topic, you and your wife will notice traits, I'm sure.

Please don't worry and try to reassure your wife.

Good luck

I can only give our personal experience and hope it helps. Father in law likely is an aspie and marries Mother in Law and they have 3 normal children. The next generation all the kids marry and have kids themselves. All these kids are NT except my husband and I who have a NT son and an aspie daughter.

My aspie brother has a NT son. I am NT with an Aspie daughter. I think your odds are obviously higher if you have the genes in your family, but how much higher? I don't know. I suppose it depends on your spouse's genes as well.

Let's put it this way: in all ways, your child is likely to be like you and your wife. This is always a mixed blessing for every set of parents, and the best defense, which you can start now, is figuring out how to best manage yourselves. Follow Plato: "Know Thyself" All the parenting strategies you will need are inside the two of you if you really sit and think about how you've managed to become adults and function enough to get married and (I assume) keep a job.

The odds increase with age and in certain locations as well. Where I am roughly 1 in 60 boys is diagnosed with some degree of autism.