Remember how a certain autism organization made a fear-mongering video claim that 80% of parents with an autism diagnosis are divorced? Well, that turns out to be a load of crap. Shocking, I know.
I have an autistic friend whose parents divorced within the past few years. Naturally, this is quite upsetting. The fear-mongerers would have my friend believe that it is his fault that his parents divorced. This is unacceptable and utterly infuriating. I believe the psychological literature on divorce generally indicates that many children tend to blame themselves for their parents' divorce, regardless. Unfortunately, unscrupulous and unscientific organizations seem to have no qualms about adding to those feelings of guilt for autistic children in particular.
Skeptics and scientifically-oriented people have long questioned the origins of that 80% statistic, and promotion of this statistic has always been irresponsible at best. Now, these organizations have no excuse.
This study needs to be read by every autism organization and major media outlet in the country.
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7 comments:
Stunning, isn't it?
Of course, when autism organizations promoted the statistic, they never framed it as "see, we (parents) just aren't up to the job"
Blogger ate up a comment from Sullivan of LB/RB. Please repost--I didn't not approve the comment. Sorry for the technical difficulties.
I was just pointing out that this result is not surprising at all. However, I don't expect the myth to go away any time soon.
What is worse than the misinformation is the way the misinformation is used. The stories are always "autism is horrible, see what it does to us parents" rather than, "Parenting is hard, and you have to go into it prepared to accept that it may be much harder than you expect"
But that puts responsibility on us parents, not our children or outside influences.
Now that is really interesting. Some acquaintances of mine recently divorced [their child is autistic] and I immediately thought of that nightmare statistic that been rammed down our throats for as long as I can remember - delighted to hear it's just an urban myth.
It's good that it never became a self-fulfilling prophecy, though. I guess parents, as a group, are less gullible or suggestible than you might think.
80% just sounds too rounded-off to be accurate. 36% sounds like a more accurate estimate. Obviously, Autism Speaks is biased towards parents who felt like they had to give up their lives and marriages for their autistic children.
As a parent of a child with ASD, and in a committed marriage, and knowing many, many other parents of kids with ASD, also in committed relationships, I always found this "statistic" irresponsible, and not in accord with my experience. It's nice to see it debunked.
And yes, it's part of the poor-poor-pitiful-me-autism-parent shtick.
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