Opinions on the Raised by an Aspergers Parent discussion?

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What an interesting thread! Thank you everyone.

I am an aspie with an aspie mother and probably an aspie father. My dad died twenty something years ago and it's hard to remember enough to see truly whether he was or not. I am leaning further towards yes.

Since my discovery of my own autism, I can clearly see it in my mother. But she is 85 and not very open to understanding new things. I have agonized over whether I should tell her, but currently my feeling is I have no right to disrupt her world this late in life.

Mum was verbally abusive, though always loving. Verbally abusive in the way an aspie might be if they have not become aware of their issues. She has very fixed views that don't change easily. She seemed to see no problem with the way my dad behaved.

Dad was physically abusive. He had major rage issues. I now think there might be a connection between the rage and autistic meltdown. Rages were often precipitated by him getting senatorial overload. Both my brother and I inherited the rage problem. I have managed to never hurt anyone physically. That was not the case for my brother. And his inability to deal with this lead to him killing himself.
Dad's problems came, to some extent, from his relationship with his dad who had PTSD from WWII, fell apart and left.

So you see all of this is very complicated. It doesn't help to look for simple solutions of who is good and who is bad. We are all both.
In these situations autism is mixed together with trauma. And that is what life is. An inextricably woven combination of all the things that have happened and that are.

Victims of abuse need to be able to vent their anger. That anger MUST be expressed in some way. If we are aware enough, we get to choose whether we do it in a more of less healthy way.

At the same time, when we are not aware, we are liable to hurt people unintentionally. Awareness of autism and it's effects is still in its infancy, so imagine what it must have been like when my parents grew up. Life is hard and always has been. There are no simple answers. Nothing is either or; everything is both and.

Long story short, I was adopted as a child. My adopted family has its own issues. (All families do.) My adopted dad is very NT. I love him but don't really 'connect.' Of course I've known him for my whole childhood and we have so many common experiences we've shared. Trips to the amusement park. Movies we saw together. But our vibe is off.

I found my biological family as an adult. There's a whooole lotta "broad autism phenotype" in there, from my diagnosed-with-asperger's half-brother to my math professor grandmother. I have very little culturally in commo with these people--no shared childhood memories of the park or movies. We have different social and religious backgrounds and grew up in different parts of the country. But we 'get' each other. We have a kind of common way of experiencing things, despite our differences. It was a relief to meet people like myself, really.

I'm so thankful now for all of my family, NT, ASD, BAP, whatever. I love them all.