Aspies For Freedom

"One per cent of children aged 5-16 had autistic spectrum disorder. The majority of these children were boys (82 per cent).

Unlike children with the more common disorders, autistic children tended to have more highly qualified parents than other children: 46 per cent had parents with qualifications above GCSE compared with 35 per cent of other children. Similarly, autistic children were less likely to live in low income families: only 9 per cent lived in households with a gross weekly income of less than £200 per week compared with 20 per cent of other children." *

Isn't it curious how autistic children are more likely to have more affluent, intelligent parents?  Or is it that perhaps parents in higher socio-economic groups are better at asserting their/their children's rights, and obtaining referrals and assistance?

I do wonder whether those children from lower socio-economic groups, without intelligent, well-paid professional parents who perhaps aren't so able to advocate for them, are by default labelled 'bad' because of their behavioural problems arising from their Aspieness?  Or maybe their 'symptoms', if not blamed on the badness of the child are perhaps blamed on 'bad' parenting, because afterall, in this country so often poor = unfit to parent.  [Numerous cases of children being taken into care because the parent(s) have an inadequate income, reported elsewhere and somewhat of a digression, so I'm not going to go into it here.]

I think the incidence is *probably* much greater than the official figures, but poorer children and/or their parents are labelled bad instead of mad.

What a choice we face, hey?  No wonder some of us end up sad.   :cry:

The more I read up about AS, the more I think about issues that I had never considered before, such as the medicalisation of differences, and there being an alternative social model to disability the more I get mad, as in angry  :evil: not mad as in, well, y'know, stuck with psychiatric/psychological labels... I mean would someone who is black or gay be 'diagnosed' as being such?


[* source: published by National Statistics Online, on 31 August 2005 at 9:30 am.  Original source: The 2004 survey of the mental health of children and young people in Great Britain, the second in a series of national surveys commissioned by the Department of Health and the Scottish Executive.]

"Or is it that perhaps parents in higher socio-economic groups are better at asserting their/their children's rights, and obtaining referrals and assistance?"

I definetely think so.

Until recently, gays were diagnosed as having a sexual disorder.

Neurodiversity.com has a collection of links about this on its Homosexuality page.

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) was originally developed as a method of "treatment" for children thought to be homosexual.

Yeah, Bonnie, I should have mentioned the historical stuff about gays being treated in that way.  I actually have a copy of an old Penguin Classic that I picked up from an Oxfam bookstore called 'Sexual Deviancy'; it was published in the 1960s/70s and the chapter on homosexuality is simultaneously hilarious/tragic.

If it took gay people 30-40 years since that book was written to gain social acceptance and get anti-homophobic legislation put into place, then maybe Apies will similarly be accepted in my lifetime.  I hope so.

I have a lot of old books, and views have changed in so many areas, it does give me hope for autism.

I have childcare books from the 30s and some of the advice is positively dangerous.

Also housewife books that tell them how to be utterly submissive in order to please their husband, and how they need to hide their feelings in order to keep a 'happy face'.

EnglishLulu, don't you think it is possible that autism is associated with more highly qualified parents because autism is genetically associated with high IQs and high IQs in blood relatives? I discovered an academic paper that found that the group of aspies who's intellectual abilities were tested in the small study were not only more likely to have low IQs than the normal bell curve, but were also more likely to have high or very high IQs than normal. One could speculate that a risk of autism is a side effect of high IQ genes. If there were no evolutionary disadvantage to having genes that code for high IQ, then everyone would have them. In our family there is definitely an association between higher IQs and the AS gene.

Yes, perhaps.  Also, Baron-Cohen has suggested 'assortive-mating' might have something to do with it >>

My [Baron-Cohen's] new theory is that it's not just a genetic condition, but it might be the result of two particular types of parents, who are both contributing genes....  But the genetic theory has a lot of evidence, and what we are now testing is that if two "systemizers" have a child, this will increase the risk of the child having autism....

...[W]e've looked at the rates of engineering in both fathers and the grandfathers of children with autism.  Engineering is an occupation where you have to be a good systemizer, for example, understanding mechanical systems.  We found that fathers of children with autism are over-represented in the field of engineering.  And what was interesting was that we found exactly that same pattern in the grandparents too.

You start with the child with autism; he or she is the end result of this experiment of nature.  And you work backwards to see if there were there clues in the previous generation — or previous two generations. This new theory is called "the assortative mating theory".  The clue that both sides of the family are contributing similar genes is that in our study of occupations, grandfathers on the maternal and the paternal sides were both more likely to be working in the field of engineering.  So the strong systemizing wasn't coming down just one side of the family.  It's called assortative mating because it describes the idea that two individuals might end up in a union because of having similar characteristics.  They're selecting each other on the basis of having similar characteristics.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/baron-co...index.html

I don't dispute any of the ideas in that article by Baron-Cohen, but one has to ask if having parents who are good systemizers explains why autistics might have more highly qualified parents. Are good systemizers more likely to have qualifications than ordinary folks or good empathisers? Can the difference in levels of qualifications be explained simply by differences in IQ levels, regardless of the type of intelligence that the parents have?

I guess one could argue that people who have superior empathising talents tend to succeed without having educational qualifications, so parents with that type of intelligence might be less likely than good systemizers to have formal qualifications.

My father was an engineer as well as my grandfather.  My father was an excellent systemizer but a bad parent.

"Also housewife books that tell them how to be utterly submissive in order to please their husband, and how they need to hide their feelings in order to keep a 'happy face'."   What I am told that I have to do that for work and job interviews:  be totally submissive, hide my feelings and keep a happy face.  

"I guess one could argue that people who have superior empathising talents tend to succeed without having educational qualifications, so parents with that type of intelligence might be less likely than good systemizers to have formal qualifications."   I agree with this one.

I still think it would be interesting to study populations where arranged marriages are the norm and what incidences of AS show up.   What about India and Pakistan?

The point I was trying to make was that while superficially it may *seem* as though the correlation is simply to highly qualified/professional parents, I think that the fact that aspie children *seem* to come from more educated/affluent families may have a hidden soci-economic factor.  I think there's probably a lot of misdiagnosis out there in relation to children from low income families and they're probably more likely to be labelled 'bad'.

I'm sure there *must* be more children from lower soci-economic groups whose parents are written off as simply 'bad' parents, and the children as simply 'bad'.

It doesn't follow that a Aspie is bound to come from a high IQ family, which is therefore likely to have a high income and standard of living.  Because don't forget, the older generations, who slipped through the diagnostic net before the early 90s won't have been diagnosed or understood to be AS.  

Yes, lots of AS people have managed to 'pretend to be normal', and yes, those will have had respectable, successful careers in engineering, computing, academia, etc.  But many will have failed to achieve their potential academically because of problems arising from their AS, many have had problems pursuing careers because of problems adjusting to office politics, many are therefore in lower paid jobs or economically inactive because of behaviours and resultant prejudices etc.

So I think there *must* be a hidden underclass of less well-educated parents, who perhaps are AS or have AS traits themselves who are unable to advocate for their children and get a diagnosis and understanding and support.

I mean, yes, there are the success stories, but for every academic or other affluent labelled 'eccentric', how many out there of lower socio-economic groups are labelled 'mad', or 'bad'.  It seems to me that the diagnosis is often dependent not just on the traits or criteria, but also socio-economic factors.

Your argument could certainly be true, in fact both of our ideas could be true, I don't see why they would be mutually exclusive.

I believe I have met a boy, I think from a working-class family, who is autistic misdiagnosed as severely ADHD. I only met the boy once but I was astonished at his Kanners-style treatment of people like objects, and his complete lack of interest in the other kids at the birthday party (!)

I would also agree that that some poor aspie parents might be at risk of being labelled as bad parents, but I've got to say that the aspies who I know the best don't act "working class" even though they are very economically disadvantaged. They don't fit the Aussie stereotype of the irresponsible bogan parents who do drugs and booze and are never married to the people who they have kids with. The aspie parents who I know have a lot of respect for education and learning and the institution of marriage. I think they are more likely to be percieved as weird than bad parents.

Where do you get the idea that it is a sign of disadvantage to not have your child diagnosed with an autism condition? Some parents choose to keep their children right away from shrinks and their labels, just as some adult aspies choose not to seek diagnosis for themself or do their best to keep clear of the mental health system.

^ you didnt put the geek test result in your sig

Adversarial wrote

I've been prompted quite a few times in my life to express emotions that I didn't actually feel, by neurotypical people who were SO SURE that they knew what I was really feeling.  :evil: This happened to me as recently as a few days ago. I now wish I had told the neurotypical person "Look, there's a big difference between the two of us, I'm a rational being and you are not. Your emotional experiences are quite different to mine." I'm just too polite!

I'm glad I was never diagnosed with any label when I was a kid in the 1970s.

:grin: