Scientific consensus is that we now recognise and diagnose autism better than ever. Previously children that struggled in school would be labelled as troubled or slow or any number of other things. The thing about autism is that like many other things it is a spectrum, and thus previously many people with mild autism would have just cruised through and been thought of as odd or antisocial. Often when really questioned, people like your parents can think of a few people like this from their school days that might now fit the definition of autism spectrum disorder.

Also, it’s worth noting that human DNA does not and cannot degrade in any manner you suggest and that kind of reasoning has unscientific and innapropriate connotations that might associate you with very disagreeable groups.

Roughly 95% of all new autism cases in the last 10 years can be accounted for in the broader definition of what autism is.

Plus the idea that DNA has “degraded” and that’s what causes autism is, frankly, so stupid as to be hilarious.

I dont believe teachers or parents to be qualified for such diagnosis. It could be that the kids are angry, annoyed, or annoying, and people think it’s autism because they saw one once in a movie. Remember that adults are not very smart in general.

Another theory could be that those 70 years old people are boomers that have been spanked a lot and are more quiet compared to kids whose parents let them do anything (too much freedom and not enough education).

Anyway, I wouldn’t trust people to judge anything medical. My boomer parents say stupid things most of the time, yet they do it confidently and think their opinion is the only valid one.

A dumb opinion would be that not caring about others and saying stupid stuff is “autistic,” are all the boomers autists after all? See what I did?

I feel like maybe the human DNA has degraded too much in 2 or 3 generations.

Ancient Greeks notwithstanding, being non-heterosexual was considered a disease to be eliminated or cured until people finally accepted that it was a natural part of being an animal. Would you say being gay is a consequence of flawed genetics, or would you like to try phrasing that remark a bit differently?

Seems like the consensus taking shape in these comments, the way I understand it anyway, is that the only new thing is pathologising neurodivergence and beginning to actually accept such people into society. Treating it as something new or out of control is merely a reaction to new norms.

A lot of kids are not neurodivergent, still. But there are enough that school budgets for special needs in many or most places are very badly under-provisioned. I worry that if schools are not going to get massively higher funding, they will be faced with either under-serving neurodivergent kids like they used to, or fundamentally rethinking some things.

I’ve talked about it with my parents they are 70ish and teachers and they both say in the years they worked there weren’t as many kids diagnosed with some condition

I can almost guarantee they worked with tons if autistic kids, they just didn’t know it.

Why do I say that? Because I’ve had multiple teachers tell me that my diagnosed AuDHD kid isn’t autistic. Clearly, the teachers who only see the kids while masking and yell at them when they act out would know better than a trained professional or the parents who see them when they feel safe and don’t have the energy to mask anymore.