Maternal Childhood Experience, Mate Choice, And Autism

Here is an interesting paper from several years ago, abstract:

Maternal experience of childhood abuse has been associated with offspring autism. To explore whether familial tendency towards autistic traits-presumably related to genetic predisposition-accounts for this association, we examined whether women who experienced childhood abuse were more likely to select mates with high levels of autistic traits, and whether parental autistic traits accounted for the association of maternal abuse and offspring autism in 209 autism cases and 833 controls. Maternal childhood abuse was strongly associated with high paternal autistic traits (severe abuse, OR = 3.98, 95% CI = 1.26, 8.31). Maternal and paternal autistic traits accounted for 21% of the association between maternal abuse and offspring autism. These results provide evidence that childhood abuse affects mate selection, with implications for offspring health.

In summary, the link between a history of childhood abuse of woman and rates of offspring autism may in part be due to the fact that such women tend to pick as mates men with higher levels of autistic traits.  This is based on the probability of an association between autistic traits in parents and children. So, the fact that the fathers have more autistic traits is one reason why the children may have such traits.  In other words, 21% of the association between mother's childhood abuse and offspring autism is due to the fact that the mothers pick as mates men who have more autistic traits tat are passed on to the children.