Aspies For Freedom

Asperger has been well established as heritable.  There is an almost 50% risk that an AS child has a relative with the same.

Certainly me, age 37, greater Washington D.C. area.  I have a conclusive Dx, actually three over a two-year period.

Good:

Occupational effects have stopped.  Fully employed 8 years.  
Relatively active community involvement, especially religious and neighbors in three-floor, six-unit block
No problems with peer abuse for nine years

Bad:

Lingering difficulty attracting attention from female strangers, could be because of poor nonverbal recognition and response (http://www.wrongplanet.net/article297.html), morbid obesity, or both, although I am intelligent and compassionate, and think I have a good personality (humor).

And yes, it does hurt and exacerbates my depression, though it is usually well controlled with the Welbutrin-Lexapro mix I've been on for a few years.


1.  Dad, died at 66, dead 11 years.  Suspected.  Master's, all-but-thesis.  Scrupulous honesty, generosity, avid interest in history, esp. WWII, read over a thousand books on it, hardly socialized, even in retirement, preferred to be reclusive in mini-cabin behind the house, by end of his life, grew long hair and a beard and even hygiene was optional.  No unusual difficulty with employment, forced enlistment into military service, or marriage, although Mom had frequent miscarriages, but we will never know if Dad had a genetic reason for that, the AS, or both.  Or if she had a genetic reason (Fragile X?).  Or both.  At time of death, Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, at home under hospice.

2.  My brother, almost 35.  Suspected.  Has between one and two semesters equivalent of college.  Complains of family, community, and romantic isolation.  However, a self-taught computer programmer, and began a 16.5 year (and counting) computer programming career two months after quitting college (immediately).  Period of unemployment between employers 2 and 3, after 15 years experience, after untreated depression temporarily eroded his technical skills.  My local area.

3.  Dad's next oldest brother, age 72.  Was a mathematics teacher in Illinois.  Got a Master's at little or no expense as a perk to school teachers.  Very close to grandmother, he and she would travel at will in and out of town to see us and relatives with little or no notice.  At about the death of grandmother, aged 90, also dead 11 years, married for the first time, no children from that marriage.  Retired.  Greater Los Angeles area.

4.  Their next oldest brother, age 64.  Was a chemist and was also close to grandmother.  Either has a Master's or is all-but-thesis.  Has never married.  Also Greater Los Angeles area.

The uncles have a word for what I think is Asperger.  The (surname) Curse.  It could also be alcoholism, which I understood was Grandma's problem and Mom's.  I am not sure.

It is not known whether Dad's sister, age approximately 57, or her children, a daughter approximately 36 and two sons in their early thirties, have Asperger, although she did complain about the Curse after her divorce (in her case, possibly codependency).  Has since remarried.  Had been a nurse.  Central Florida.

weeell...the chances increase with each generation of AS parents,if Sci-Fi is anything to go by

i wonder though,will it get to the point where aspies can outnumber/outbreed NT's?...

(note that i know the fallacy of the above)

but no,the chances are greatly increased with an AS parent-to the point of almost certainty if both are,if i am correct...which i doubt,im not really in a think mode.

Darn it, I lost my draft

Yetti has an important point, many people with AS will choose to have a child that could have AS, autism, or neither, perhaps if their AS is primarily beneficial.

It is the choice of you and your future mate to consider the pros and cons.

For most of us, Asperger is a mixed blessing, with drawbacks and advantages.  However, the drawbacks are often in the past.

Drawbacks:

Four no longer significant

1.  Childhood abuse by one babysitter who thought the AS justified his actions
2.  Peer abuse from male peers as late as the dorms in graduate study
3.  Employment discrimination, even with a graduate degree, as late as age 29, when a successful community college certificate program, affiliated with Maryland VR, worked for me and six other men.  The movie Independence Day is special to me, because their biggest weapon didn't work, either, but they did eventually succeed by employing a clever strategy.
4.  Appearing rude, inconsiderate, and impolite when I did not know any better (a significant problem until late college or maybe graduate school)

Two lingering significant problems

5.  Avoidance by female peers between middle school and the present day.  On very exceptionally rare occasions I get a rude reaction from a woman, perhaps twice to date.  Equally Yoked Christian Singles and Dateable have generally proved unsatisfactory, and E-Harmony has been strongly recommended.
6.  This has implications for exacerbating my depression, although it is generally controlled by my prescribed mix of Welbutrin and Lexapro, and it should be noted that the combinations must be re-evaluated by a psychiatrist every few years.  At minimum it makes me sad and want to cry (perhaps less after a workout at the gym)

Lesson for you all: We do not seem to be able to give what the NTs think they need, the way they think they need it.  That resolves the conundrum of if-we-are-worthy-individuals (character, personality, intelligence, humor, compassion, and so on) why are we treated so shabbily?/i]./b]

But, there [b][i]ARE advantages!

1.  Whether or not it is because of Asperger syndrome, or because of a family genetic pattern that includes Asperger and intellectual aptitudes......

a. very strong technical aptitude, especially computer programming and kindred fields like Web design or databases.  My brother has this, too, but has done it twice as long.
b. excellent aptitude with foreign languages (Spanish grades of A; Latin, straight As) and grasping the grammatical structure of language (made explicitly clear by studying Latin) (parents were well educated in grammar and writing, Dad, writer/editor, Mom, trained to teach high school English, but never did, Mom also studied Spanish and Dad may have studied French)
c. excellent aptitude in mathematics (one uncle was a math teacher) and science (another was a chemist)
d. excellent aptitude in history (Dad was a history enthusiast, especially WWII)
e. excellent aptitude in the social sciences too (Dad and Mom minored in sociology, Mom also minored in psychology, my advanced degree in sociology helps me process social responses in near-real-time and is a valuable accommodation)
f. I might have excellent aptitude in music, as Dad and his brother were gifted in vocal music, but I have never tried it

2.  Asperger allows me to

a. concentrate very closely on details when doing so is crucial to the task (case in point, editing a Census Bureau dataset on contiguous counties, to take into account updates since the last Census, required fine detail to a table associating pairs of counties that touched each other) my group manager commended me on this, also, a Navy Access database with forms and reports that very closely resembled the original paper forms (I used a ruler and calculator because I have no eye for judgment)

b. avoid the it-can't-happen-to-me attributional bias (prevented me from risky behaviors, notably any sexual activity or any experimentation with any illegal substance, and a few railroad crossings too)

c. make me extremely resistant to prejudice and discrimination

3. life experiences with frequent harassment (verbal, physical, and once, sexual) have given me a strong sense of compassion and equal protection under the law, and helped me become a Christian

I so hope that if I got a kid it would be aspie, at least someone I can relate to. I probably wouldn't have interest in what friends it got or being able to help with the daily problems of a NT kid. I would want every possibility for an aspie kid to evolve in the interests they stumble upon, letting the kid become who it wants to be.

Working on it... I'm thinking having a lot of kids (say, 8 or so) would be fun, but I'm not too fond of the pregnancy thing yet.

Before deciding on number.. find out the cost and effort of raising a child in a healthy environment!  A good parent doesn't just churn out kids, they bring them into a home that has the financial ability to care for them, unless you are going to be an incubator for providing children to other homes.

Its like pets.. sometimes being a good pet owner is saying no to pet ownership.

in 1982, the cost of raising a child to adulthood was $200,000 not counting college costs or private school care... today it is far higher cost... I would say going close to half a million dollars.. do think twice when haivng those children... educate yourself on parenting....

Don't worry; I know. And trust me, I haven't decided on a number yet (would be kind of impossible to do anyway without even having experienced a single kid, unless you plan on having zero children). But surely it's fine to say that I think having a lot of kids will be fun? It's not like I can order septuplets after this one anyway...

I'm not sure where you got those numbers from, but I've seen studies that say what the average amount is upper-middle class families spend on kids until they're 18 and iirc for 2000 or so it was something like $250,000 per child. I mean, think about it... $250k/18=13.9k... That's more than the poverty line for one adult. Then, most upper middle class people spend far more on their kids than is necessary to have healthy, happy kids. For one, one of the big expenses they put in those studies are the kids' rooms... the cost of a bigger house. Solution is to buy a cheap house and let the kids share bedrooms. Also, most people in those studies have only one or two kids, so that not much stuff gets reused... toys cost the same amount whether you have only one kid playing with them or 8 in a row (obviously, they're going to have somewhat different interests so you are going to buy more toys for 8 kids than for one, but not 8 times as many). Food costs can be kept low by growing a lot of your food yourself. Health insurance costs don't go up after the third child (at least not on our policy).

Well, colleges do require that every separate adult son or daughter pay separate tuition.

Yep, my brother and I didn't need to share a bedroom until we downsized from a 3 BR house in Waldorf to the 2 BR vacation property in WV, then we shared a room.

as you say,Erko,as you say.