Engineer in your family?

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Hey guys,
I just saw an article by Simon Baron Cohen talking about the higher than control correlation he discovered between people with autism and their parents and/or grandparents being engineers. I think he took around 2,000 families roughly half with at least one autistic child and the other half with at least one child with down syndrome or tourettes (but no autism) and reported that 12.5% of the families touched by autism had an engineer parent while the non-autistic families was around 5% for parents who were engineers. When looking at grandparents the gap widened significantly with 21.2% of grandparents being engineers in the families affected by autism while in the other families engineer grandparents fell to 2.5%.
So if you have an ASD (or like me suspect one) do you have an engineer, architect or some similar professional in your recent family tree? Same question if you're an NT or have a non-autistic diagnosis.

Well I'm an engineer with Asperger's, does that count?! But no, I don't have any family members who are engineers, or even scientific or technical, on either side.

My mother is an IT specialist, my grandmother was a techie for the military in the 50's or 60's. Long family history of scientists. No engineers though.

Dad was a mechanical & chemical engineer who designed and built his own chemical plant and held a half dozen patents. But I suspect I got my Asperger's from my mom (who was weird and emotionally disconnected). She grew up on a farm in Scotland and her dad was a tenant farmer there. She came to the states and became a nurse, which was one of the few jobs open to women in the early 1950s.

My dad works in IT and I have a brother who is studying some sort engineering. My maternal grandparents technically weren't architects, however they did build a whole block of houses in their town back in the 60's and 70's. I've always assumed they were either of my grandpa's or my grandma's design, because they made no mention of any business partners. My grandpa was also a plane mechanic in WWII England.

One of my grandfathers had a PhD in math. Does that count?

my parents are both clergy, but I'm pretty sure there's ASD on my mom's side and one of my uncles is an engineer.

How similar is "some similar" profession.

My mom is an accountant. My grandfather (on the other side) was a pharmacist, my uncle is an electrical engineer but he's not a parent or grandparent. Other family members have less technical jobs.

I don't know which way I'm supposed to vote on the poll.

My father and uncle are scientists, chemistry and physics.

My father, uncle and brother are engineers. My grandfather was also an engineer who worked with NASA. I come from a family of engineers and nurses.

me, dad and granddad are all engineerss, also my sister is a techie
dont forget accountants, some doctors too

The developmental paediatrician who diagnosed our son told me that if someone has Aspergers, they will always be or have been an engineer in their 'blood line'. My son is related to that many engineers, it's not even funny..
Engineering is a very broad term though - my husband is a computer programmer and my father in law was a surveyor, both fall under the engineering umbrella. He has electrical, mechanical engineers as aunts and uncles.

i have my dad and my brother who are mechanical engineers

my other brother who is construction management but wish's he went the same as the last two......


i myself want something different.....but ya math runs in the family....

Nope.

We don't have "math genes" in my family. Most everyone is a blue collar worker with either a GED, or nothing beyond a high school diploma.

If there's a profession that seems to run in both sides of my family, it's emergency services (fire fighters, police, EMTs, ect.).

Thanks for the responses guys Baron-Cohen only mentions 'engineers' in the magazine article I read but I guess if we're not being too literal then very technical professions like mathematics or theoretical physics might involve the transmission of the same 'autism genes' that Baron-Cohen hypothesises. If you feel like one of your parents or grandparents has/had a very technical profession feel free to choose option 1. I was just curious so the answer doesn't have to correspond exactly to engineering.
My Dad was a draughtsman/architect by trade and designed bridges and other road related structures for decades but now he leaves that to younger people adept at modern computer methods of design. Now he just estimates the probable construction costs for a company when they apply for a contract so they can bid competitively against other construction companies for potential clients.