Do you want your kids to be autistic?

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I would have voted yes if this were posted this summer or before.

I would like my kids to be the way that God wants them to be.

Born to be different topic

My three children are NT, so the question would be whether I would be happy should any grandchildren be autie/AS. Having an AS parent is different from having an AS child. I must ask them what they think, as it is their choice whether to have children or not.

I do think having kids to be your friends or love you because no one else will is really stupid.

However, just given that you're going to have kids, which seems to be assumed by the poll, why not hope you can teach them?

A large amount of our suffering is caused by the fact that society is set up for NTs. There's a lot that a parent can do to mitigate that. Others have pointed out in many places the small annoyances that add up, the high baseline stress level. I've been really lucky, and can personally vouch for what happens when you just have Asperger's. It doesn't suck. And that's just having the NTs in my life not make things (much) worse; with a parent who actually understood what it was like and knew what to do, rather than learning on the fly while speaking another language, I don't see as there would be any more downside than there is to being NT.

On the other hand, I seriously doubt my ability to parent an NT. So why would I immediately want an NT? That would be a serious challenge and although I would take it and could probably manage something (rather than bemoaning cruel fate and calling my child a plague), I don't see why I should go asking for extra trouble.

Wow...to the people who want their kids to be autistic...please tell me you're joking.

First off having an autistic kid just because you are one too does not guarantee you will relate or get along with them. My dad admits that I may have gotten my AS from him but he still treats my social difficulties as pure b.s. without even considering how his own AS may have affected his relationship with his mom and dad. He's a hypocrite to say the least.

Plus being a parent requires patience and even if one were determined to have patience with an autistic child it would likely be much harder for someone like me to be able to understand the child's needs or how to address them. I have trouble even relating to other people with autism.

I cannot bear the thought of bringing another autistic person into a world that has no tolerance or patience with them. And I fear as one who gets easily frustrated and prefers antisocialness I would only contribute to the ignorance...or worse give the wrong impression to the child that I dont care about them. I just dont think it's worth it on the child's side of things. They deserve to believe that it's okay to be difference and not be able to socialize as efficiently as others but we just dont live in that kind of world.

I would prefer working with autistic children or at most adopt or foster the current autistic children that are here now or may come in the future.

I wouldn't mind, personally.

The problem is that the poll assumes that you will definitely be having kids of your own, and will definitely have a preference. Of course, it's probably morally better in many cases to adopt if you're going for NT. In many cases, we'd make sucky parents.

But the question is whether, given that we're having kids of our own and can choose, we want them to be autistic or not. And it's NOT hard to be patient with an autistic child. Or rather it is, but no harder in absolute terms than to be patient with an NT child. A lot of the difficulties supposedly inherent in dealing with people on the spectrum are actually inherent in a clash of neurology, which does not apply for us. If you as a PERSON can't relate to your children (which I doubt you can know unless you have them), you're unfit to be a parent, but that means you shouldn't have NT children either.

Yes, that's no guarantee that we'll relate to our children. It merely opens the faint possibility that we maybe possibly could, rather than making it utterly impossible. I don't know about you, but, child of my body or not, I'd have a hard time loving an NT child that I had to cuddle constantly and who was always trying to manipulate me.

The world is becoming a better and better place for autistics; why let ourselves die out right when the next generation might actually have it easy, or at least as easy as NTs?

There are reasons not to have kids at all, but those aren't really relevant to the poll.

I don't want kds but if I did I'd prefer non-autistic children. I don't want them going through having no friends, struggle to hold a basic conversation, be made fun of, suffer from depression, have sensory overload, etc. I wouuld want them to be as happy as possible, and having an ASD makes that harder.

Consider that some social change would greatly reduce the mocking and help a little with making friends, and would reduce the number of sensory overloads. That in turn would make suffering from depression no more likely than for NTs. And consider that the social change necessary for that is already in the making.

I waffle back and forth on whether I want children, and even if I knew I did, I'm not sure I'll ever be in the kind of long-term, stable relationship which would lead me to have them. That said, if I did somehow end up with progeny, I expect it would make me very sad if I couldn't relate to it. Sometimes I think I would feel guilty if I passed on my autie genes and the accompanying loneliness/frustration/etc, but I think, if the child was only mildly autistic, it would be far better off than I was, because I would be more prepared to parent an autistic child than my mother was to parent me.

N/A

I don't want kids. I'm much too selfish for that. However, If I ever fall in love, if my woman really wanted kids I would.

In that case, I'd say no. I'd rather them not be burdened with the same things I have been.

Well, I do not want kids because I do not know how I would be able to raise them. I'd probably be an awful mother obsessed with developping their intellect because I did not have this as a child... Plus, I would not know what to do to avoid them being lonely or beaten by the others and I would not wish my kids to live the same thing as I did.

Furthermore, I feel that it is wrong to impose life on a being that has not chosen to live and did not ask for anything, not only when you see the political, economical and ecological context in which we live, but when you think about all the questions one can ask themselves about life and death, all the troubles we can face, everything we can think of. I know that my parents do not wonder so much about life, death, the meaning of everything so it probably did not bother them but it does and I would not want to take the risk to impose life on a child.

It's not only a matter of disability. I would accept my child as they are though I would probably feel bad if they are not happy, and I would most likely feel overwelmed by the thought of my unability to raise a child to be more normal and have friends, especially if he does not have any disability or my asocial character.

Really, I do not want kids right now but if I do later or have one, I would not wish them to have a disability but would accept them anyway and try to make the best out of it.