For the study, researchers divided parents into two groups: those with jobs that are not people-oriented jobs (considered technical) and those with people-oriented jobs (considered nontechnical). They found that fathers who worked in finance were four time
more likely to have a child on the autism spectrum than those with the nontechnical jobs (which could include those in media, education, or sales industries, for example). And those who worked in health care (working in a medical lab, for example) were six times more likely. A mother’s job held no association to autistic offspring unless both she and her husband worked in technical fields. In that case, their children were at a higher risk of developing a more severe case of autism.
“We aren’t exactly sure why, but we speculate that people who choose these technical fields do so because their brains are wired differently — they may be more antisocial, prefer to focus on one thing at a time, and not talk a lot. We see those traits in autism too,” lead first author Aisha S. Dickerson, PhD, a researcher at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, tells Yahoo Shine. “It’s also possible that some adults in tech fields are on the far end of the autism spectrum level themselves, but are undiagnosed with mild cases or don’t need diagnoses at all.” Dickerson adds that it’s possible that the disorder can be genetically passed from one parent to the offspring or from the genetic combination of both parents’ DNA.
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And while past research has found that highly educated parents and those of high socioeconomic status were more likely to have autistic children, Dickerson’s study adjusted for those factors to pinpoint the parent’s occupation as a possible link. “However, parents in technical fields who are expecting should not begin worrying that their child will have autism,” says Dickerson. “These results are only a steppingstone to further understand the condition as a whole.”
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Dickerson’s work echoes research conducted in 2011 by Cambridge University in England, which found that three times as many children were diagnosed with autism in a region of the Netherlands known as being a tech-industry hub than in areas with fewer tech jobs.
Autism spectrum disorders are a group of developmental disabilities that can cause social, communication, and behavioral challenges. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about 1 in 68 American children are diagnosed, and the condition is more common among boys than girls.
The cause of autism is a source of constant debate, largely fueled by an antivaccine movement led in part by celebrities, including Kristin Cavallari and Jenny McCarthy, who recently backtracked on her stance. The theory gained traction thanks to a 1998 study that has since been widely discredited. Others believe that autism is caused by environmental factors such as certain household chemicals and pesticides. One small study published in March 2014 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the disorder starts in the womb, specifically in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. The idea is that both genes and some outside influences (for example, contracting the flu while pregnant) work together to disrupt brain development. "It has to be something that involves mom, something that she is exposed to or that is happening to her," study author Eric Courchesne PhD of the University of California, San Diego’s Autism Center of Excellence
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