Do Your Parents Fit The Assortative Mating Theory of AS?

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There are many theories of AS (I'm talking about the whole of the spectrum, not just Aspergers) and only one of them really jumps out at me as the most plausible. Assortative Mating. There is much talk of NT and AS as two very discrete groups and the more I read this forum the more I can see differences. But I also see a "grey area" where NT and AS shade into each other and that's where assortative mating comes in. As Wired Magazine put it several years ago: nerd+nerd=AS. For purposes of this post, I'm thinking of "nerd" as somebody who has the "non-verbal language and social cues" module operating but has the tendency towards intense focus on something not particularly popular (which earns you the name "nerd" in school) and is more interested in doing his or her own thing than in being popular. (What a terrible definition, but I hope you get the gist.)

I'm NT but somewhat nerdy, as are my parents. My husband is NT but somewhat nerdy as is one brother but not his parents. Our daughter is AS. Jenny McCarthy and some other parents may see an utterly alien person in their child that they can't make heads or tails of. But my husband and I both see elements of ourselves in our daughter but writ large. Very Large. Of course she is her own unique individual but there are things about her which are just like me or just like him but they are tamped down in us and very strong in her. It's as though the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That's why Assortative Mating makes so much sense to me. It's as though 2+2=144 genetically, somehow. I was always a little shy. She struggles far more than I did and often just gives up. I always liked to listen to the same song 3 or 4 times in a row. She listens for 100 times in a row. I've got a pretty good rote memory and so does my husband. Hers is unbelievable. I always did my own thing and so did my husband but we both recruited little core groups of friends to do it with us. She does her own thing on her own and pays absolutely zero attention to what others are into nor does she try to recruit them. My husband and I constantly throw lines from movies and songs into conversation. In her, it was a more pure echolalia for awhile.

Maybe some people here are the offspring of the captain of the football team who married the cheerleader but somehow I doubt it (but hey...who knows). Do you see elements of AS in otherwise NT members of your family? Or in your parents? I am really wondering about this whole Assortative Mating theory of people having kids who are nominally NT but stabnd on the border and that border is sometimes called "nerd".

My personal theory that I made up (but hey...who knows): I think AS traits have been in the genome for a very long time. Maybe since the beginning. In different times and places they would be assets or liabilities. In some times and cultures, AS characteristics could look mystical, wizardly or shamanistic. In other times and cultures, stimming could get you burned at the stake for witchcraft because in that cultural context stimming would look like casting a spell. (I joked about this one time to my husband when our daughter was a toddler and flapping and I said "good thing we live in the 21st century and not the 16th or she would be called a witch" and then realized that probably actually happened to some people-uggh). But back in the day, people didn't really get to choose their own partners. Getting to choose your own partner is a pretty recent phenomenon. So the tendencies would stay fairly tamped down in the gene pool and surface sometimes in some people but not all that much. Lots of websites are devoted to guessing who had AS tendencies in history. Isaac Newton? Maybe. It's fun to guess but the fact that people didn't get to pick their own mates that much but got them picked more or less by family pressure would prevent too much assortative mating from going on.

Now you can marry who you want and your family has no say. The borderline AS-ish woman is no longer popped into a nunnery or married off to a thoroughly NT baron. The borderline AS-ish man can go for the borderline AS-ish woman if he wants and doesn't have to settle for the girl from a good family who will tie two family businesses together in one conglomerate. You get my drift. So now maybe the whatever-it-is gets to pop up out of the gene pool a lot more often than it used to because now poeple can marry who they are attracted to, not who their family picks.

It makes more sense to me than vaccines anyway. If it was all a vaccine, our daughter wouldn't be so very much like us but yet so much MORE like us than we are ourselves so she needs accomodations in school we never needed.

Do your parents fit this theory?

No.

My parents are frighteningly normal.

My mother is academically gifted but doesn't have AS.

My biological father was also highly intelligent.

So yes, this theory has at least a valid point.

My father is as NT as you can get, unfortunately, my mother is very likely AS.

Maybe you're right and the AS genes are reassembling now.

My father is an electrical engineer, and has AS traits. My mother is comparatively NT, but she likes structure and routine in day to day life.

Neither of my parents fit this “nerd” type persona at all. Neither does my sister who has a son with HFA.

Sure, but I think you are very much mistaken, as throughout history in the West at least, the overwhelming majority of people were not the kind of folk whose marriage was of particular interest to anyone but themselves.

I agree with Pandd's comment about marriage.

As to your thoughts - my son is diagnosed with Asperger's and I would say that both his father and I have a significant number of traits. I'm not convinced that either of us would get a diagnosis, but sometimes I think we might.

I have no idea what my parents are/were to be honest. Neither of them were entirely sane and I didn't know my father well but from what I know, I think it's possible he may have been on the spectrum? Hard to say but I know that I often felt like I could understand how he felt although he was a complete mystery to my mother.

I dunno. I think they are/were both diffent shades of crazy

This is a very interesting theory. I really enjoyed this post.
Pandd, the "getting popped into a nunnery" is a phenomenon still in recent memory- the unmarried farm daughters in poor Catholic families often went to live- against their wills- to the convent in the 20's and 30's. I worked for half a year at one of the nursing homes where aging nuns were left to rot and lots of aspieish behavior was in evidence there. It was a very sad, sad, sad place to work.
But, this is kind of like the whole Silicon Valley thing. Aspies meet other aspies, and procreate, and lo and behold look what happens.

My mom is very AS-ish....She has two NT sisters..both on depression meds..and a brother who i don't know well enough to tell. Her mom was NT....and she described her dad as being very mathematical and never talking much or connecting with anyone...and theorised that he had PTSD from WWII...
My dad would not qualify for AS..but he has some ADD symptoms...like trouble with impulse control... and is of above average intelligence and has a broad range of skills. His dad seemed very ASish and his dad's brother was more extreme..There seems to be a serious AS/OCD streak on that side...and lots of architechts, engineers and inventors....

They married for their unusual-ness and out popped dumb little me....my younger sister is NT...but with possible borderline issues.

You can see lots of “aspie” like behavior in creatures “left to rot”. This is true of human and non human animals. Check out footage of young children severly neglected and restrained in some third world orphanages. Plenty of “aspie” like behaviour there. Look at non human animals confined in inappropriate cages. They tend to manifest traits associated with ASDs also.

Of course my comments were actually about marriage and not about convents or incarceration as a nun.
Actually this is the theory which silicone valley is often used as an example of.

i'm pushing this theory for many years and it seems so obvious to me that i wonder how no one of the so called pro's ever came up with it,
my theory goes even further than yours as i feel,and your data support it,that actually there is no such thing as AS but the sets of behaviors we present are evolutionary and as soon as society around us recognize it the better it is going to be for everyone.
the traits AS present are going to be consider the norm at the not so far future,
our society tendency toward more privacy,uniqueness,focused attention,sensitivity,diversity,tolerance and creativity are very hard to miss,
the only people who missed them are the so called academics and health pro's

I found this funny, because my family does this. In fact, whenever I talk to my daughter, she and I sometimes use well known movie lines to express an emotion or feeling. Often, though, it is totally random, which makes it fun. We also use lines from books that we have both read.

My father was brilliant at things like Algebra and Trigonometry. He also liked taking television sets apart and fixing them. If he had been born later, he would have been into computers. He disliked loud noise, could often be very harsh and controlling. He wasn't one to entertain guests. He disliked having people over to visit, unless they were not going to stay long. I don't know if he had AS, though. My mother does not have it. However she does have personality issues.

*sigh* I'm the daughter of an engineer and a math professor.

no. my father didn't finish school and my mother is more on the 'nerd' side but I don't think she really qualifies for that.

everyone on my family has bad anxiety which I think more accurately describes their aversion to social interaction. they're very capable of it, at least. My father is the only one close to any preoccupation but it isn't unusual.