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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   1867 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 25, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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If I marry an aspie woman, what are the odds that we get profoundly autistic kids? Does anyone have an intuition on this, or any data?

I was curious and did my best* to track that down, but only found tangentially related sources and then engaged in napkin math.

Something like 5x relative risk, and the probability of being on the spectrum being anywhere from 4.8% to 37%(!). Further figuring out the odds of them being low functioning is something I'm not going to try when it's so in the air. At any rate, you should consider factors such as maternal and paternal age too, since environmental conditions contribute quite strongly.

*The one citation I will provide is that this isn't true

At any rate, you should consider factors such as maternal and paternal age too, since environmental conditions contribute quite strongly.

Is it really environmental and not accumulation of mutations and genetic abnormalities?

You're correct, I misphrased that, I don't think general mutations in DNA should fall under the environment.

and the probability of being on the spectrum being anywhere from 4.8% to 37%(!)

This is a massive variation on rates, from basically "eh, it's a risk we're willing to take" to "sorry, but I don't to play 2x russian roulette with my mode of life every time we have a child". One would think we would have a more precise handle on this probability, because it's an important factor to look at when choosing your life partner.

I'll worry about the DSM-5 and the upcoming 6 when I'm a bonafide shrink instead of a LARPing one, ASD can be tricky to diagnose, and there has been sufficiently recent and sweeping changes to the criteria that barring flagrant cases, I don't aspire to more than "I know it when I see it".

I will point out that these are stupid figures derived from a few minutes of fucking about, season with salt appropriately, and environmental factors play a massive part. Further, that's about ~all reasonably diagnosable as ASD, covering high functioning and greentext material alike. Being a high functioning autistic isn't all that bad, especially if they have a knack for programming 🙏. Low functioning? Both they and their families are better off with them dead, I'm sorry to say.

If he's dating an aspie woman in their late 30s, well better keep a very close eye on the pediatric milestones. Either way, there's not much you can do about it when it comes to treatment or screening.

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