Autism risk increases past the maternal age of 16 and the paternal age of 18, respectively.

TheConstructorFL · 2023-02-20T07:41:40+00:00

Same with Schizophrenia, Mental Retardation, Depression etc. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01753-x

PikaPikaDude · 2023-02-20T12:32:54+00:00

Important to look at actual graphs here.

Risk is not zero at maternal 16 and increase up to 30 is limited. After 30 it goes up faster to make a 45yo have approximately twice the risk a 16yo has.

For fathers, it's also not zero at 18. Increase is more linear constant, but not as fast. Twice the risk of an 18yo isn't even reached at 60 there.

In general, it confirms what was already known about autism risk by parental age. And it's also not a secret the best time for a woman to have children is before 30. 30-35 is still ok and after that risks get much higher. For men the risk cut off isn't as sudden, perhaps an evolutionary adaptation to mitigate risks form parenthood at later ages.

RSDevotion1 · 2023-02-20T00:24:36+00:00

The sample consisted of 417 303 Swedish children born 1984–2003. ASD case status (N = 4746) was ascertained using national and regional registers. Smoothing splines in generalized additive models were used to estimate associations of parental age with ASD.

Graph

CornellWest · 2023-02-20T21:51:21+00:00

I don't think this paper establishes a relationship between paternal age and risk of ASD. If you look at the graph in figure 2 the effect is pretty weak to begin with. Referencing u/PikaPikaDude elsewhere in this thread:

For fathers, it's also not zero at 18. Increase is more linear constant, but not as fast. Twice the risk of an 18yo isn't even reached at 60 there.

Then from the paper itself:

In analyses stratified by co-parental age, increased risk due to advancing paternal age was evident only with mothers ≤35 years. In contrast, advancing maternal age increased risk regardless of paternal age.

This could indicate that the overall paternal effect has a component that is due to selection bias. Men tend to have children with women closer to their own age so there is there is some amount of misattributed risk being imported from the mother's side for older fathers.

Selection bias may not fully explain the paternal effect but it could be significant given that the paternal effect disappears entirely when the mother is over 35. A 38 year old father of a child with 35 year old woman has the same risk as an 18 year old father but the 38yo-35yo pairing will be far more common in the population so it will be overweighted.

There could also be a second kind of selection bias if men with a genetic predisposition to ASD tend to have children a bit later in life. This would misattribute risk on to fathers that don't have that predisposition. From [2]:

It is possible that the connection runs the other way: Men who are likely to father a child with autism may have children relatively late in life. These men may have autism traits that delay their ability to find a partner.

A followup study could improve by controlling for existing family history of ASD in both parents.

If these biases were removed, it's possible that the slope for the paternal age graph could be near zero.

It's less likely, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the true slope was negative and that older fathers tend to be a bit less likely to produce ASD offspring. The reason is that it's fairly well established that older fathers are more likely to produce daughters and ASD is 4x less likely in women[3]. This may even explain the slight negative slope in figure 3b which is the paternal graph for the segment where the mother is over 35.

[1] Autism Spectrum Disorder, Family Health History, and Genetics

[2] The link between parental age and autism, explained

[3] Why Are Older Parents More Likely to Have Daughters?

. . .

Edit: One other observation. The paper, by leading with separate maternal and paternal graphs, is implying those variables are separable. But they aren't usefully separable because there is no paternal effect after the mother's age reaches 35. Further, the paternal graph x axis ranges 18-60 for men but 15-45 for women. I understand why, but this visually magnifies the slope for the men's graph. For these reasons, the paper is a misleading (I assume unintentionally). A better graph would have maternal age on one axis and paternal age on the other axis and several lines of fixed risk increase. For example, at what age pairings is there a 10%, 20%, or 100% increase in risk of ASD?

. . .

Edit 2: I wrote that the paper seemed misleading but unintentionally so. But then I noticed this on my second read:

we conducted stratified analyses at parental ages typically recognized as older (mothers: ≤35 vs > 35 years; fathers: ≤40 vs >40 years)

I can't really think of a reason for cherry-picking statistics on a "typically recognized" basis other than to emphasize a particular conclusion we are supposed to be coming to. It also cements my impression that the proposed effect is hard to measure.

IshTheWhale · 2023-02-27T13:33:59+00:00

My mom had me at 19 and my dad at 26 and I still ended up autistic. How did that happen?

DarthRevan6969 · 2023-03-06T08:40:15+00:00

Wow that's crazy tbh wonder what would happen if the strongest tallest fittest best looking etc. humans just bred at those ages gor the next 10 generations massive gigachads and stacies for the future.

Aesthetik_1 · 2023-02-20T16:48:09+00:00

Yeah that's not an attempt to rationalize pedophilia at all lol

tinyhermione · 2023-02-21T16:36:14+00:00

What does this tell us?

If the main goal of society was to prevent autism, teenagers should only be allowed to have children with other teenagers, and no one else should have kids. We should also add that anyone with ASD in their family should probably not have kids at all, since it's got a strong genetic component.

However teenage parenthood is associated with a worse outcome for the child overall. And autism isn't that common in the first place. So in reality: not much.

Edit: "The odds of ASD was unaffected by maternal age under 29". They saw no increased risk till the mother turned 30. Then after the risk increase was small, till after 40. After 40, few women have kids anyways.

For men the risk increases from 18 and onwards, but slower.

LesNuits · 2023-05-12T00:10:47+00:00

Parents had me at 40 (both), wasn't fair from the start (yes I am autistic).

AutoModerator · 2023-07-28T00:33:47+00:00

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JamesPuppy3000 · 2023-10-01T01:53:37+00:00

Wouldn't have children with woman who don't any autism in her family decrease the risk just a little bit?

Title	Autism risk increases past the maternal age of 16 and the paternal age of 18, respectively.
Author	RSDevotion1
Upvotes	74
Comments	36
Date	February 20, 2023 12:23 AM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/BlackPillScience
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/BlackPillScience/comments/116spku/autism_risk_increases_past_the_maternal_age_of_16/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/BlackPillScience/autism-risk-increases-past-the-maternal-age-of-16.1152044 https://theredarchive.com/post/1152044

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