This article is primarily about answering the (seemingly) common question: Is Autism genetic or is it a result of parenting/experience/environment...? If you want the short version: It's largely a genetic base that interacts with the environment and experience of life.

Some History

Autism was first identified in the early 1900's - this is not surprising as there was a lot of stuff that was being recognized for the first time in the early 1900's. Prior to that, people had not really been examining these things and certainly not in a methodical and scientific way - instead much of what is now recognized as neurodevelopmental differences (aka neurodiversity) was attributed to a variety of bizarre and largely superstitious beliefs (demons, sins of the past, etc). The journey from "recognizing" something to "understanding" something can be very long, especially if it is being done in a scientific manner (good science always questions itself).

Unfortunately, the journey involved a lot of pain and mistakes. Early efforts to help were more about containment than helping the individual - "shielding the public" from such things. As behavior science improved and moved beyond the containment idea, efforts to actually understand behavior flourished and neurodiversity (including Autism) was able to be recognized more without being as stigmatized. By the 1970's real efforts were being made to actually treat neurodiverse children with compassion and afford them the same opportunities as their peers - such as access to education (see the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act). With neurodiverse children being present in schools more, educators needed to find more ways of actually meeting their needs. Early efforts still involved a lot of segregation and relatively little emphasis on educational rigor, but least people could no longer turn their eyes away and pretend neurodiverse children didn't exist.

Progress

Further progress came as parents and Autistic individuals (especially those identified with "Asperger's" at the time) began to demand more equitable treatment, compassion, and acceptance from others. A base was beginning to form for social acceptance and fair treatment. Research continued both in trying to understand neurodevelopmental sequences, their outcomes, and how to influence those outcomes for the benefit of the individual (and society). Several things became clear out of the research:

• The neat and tidy diagnostic categories that had been used before were likely insufficient and overly broad
• Neurodevelopment for all people certainly is informed by experiences when growing up, but the building blocks an individual gets to start with are influenced and sometimes entirely determined before birth
• Neurodiverse development is not necessarily inherently maladaptive by itself and may even be essential for the survival and proliferation of humanity - variations enable adaptation

Increasingly research examining the neurology and genetics of Autism Spectrum Disorder have found evidence it is a polygenetic phenomenon - meaning that there are many genes involved in the development of characteristics we identify as Autism Spectrum Disorder.