conuly

Interesting. That hypothesis seems to make good sense. I wonder how one could test it. I suppose if the association does come from autistic mothers having children later, you'd probably expect to find that autistic children are more common with mothers whose first child is born later, regardless of whether the first child is autistic.

And I think that on the other hand, if it is in fact the case that something about mothers being older induces autism, you'd expect to find higher rates of autism among second and third children than among first children in the same families.

I wonder, though, about the finding that fathers' ages don't make much difference. Are autistic mothers more likely to have children relatively late (compared to non-autistic mothers) than autistic fathers are?