this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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This is well established. And has been for like 2 decades. https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/link-parental-age-autism-explained/
That's why it's crazy the GOP is like "Tylenol causes autism" and says that generally we don't know what causes autism.
Yes we do.
We have for a long time.
There is an insane amount of research on this. And still ongoing.
Now that's not to say it's 100% fraternal. It's not.
Babies are born from a pairing of DNA.
The relationship with mothers and autism is a lot more complex and the effect strength varies on a combination of many factors. It's a bit simpler for fathers.
Now before it sounds like I'm blaming sperm for all the human health problems I want to point out that nature designed sperm to be susceptible to fast DNA changes.
Mutations are the way evolution occurs. Without one of the sex cells having the ability to change dna relatively "quickly", the evolution changes of the organism may be too slow to adapt to new environments and may go extinct
Everything is how it should be.
But that doesn't mean we can't use modern medicine and science to help bring in healthier children.
In the olden times when we were evolving into homo sapiens, life span was much shorter. Men weren't typically fathering children in their 50s and 60s.
The errors stack up.