Читать книгу Handbook of Clinical Gender Medicine - Группа авторов - Страница 114

It has been argued that, whenever a particular environment results in males experiencing greater reproductive success than females (or vice versa), the possibility exists for the evolution of parental mechanisms which vary the sex ratio accordingly [30]. Thus, if autistic traits are more detrimental to women in terms of reproductive fitness (resulting in a decreased number of offspring) as compared to men, parents carrying genes for autistic traits could be under selection to produce sons. While we are not aware of any studies directly comparing the reproductive success of men and women with ASC or their relatives, women with ASC have been reported to have poorer peer relationships compared to males with ASC in adolescence. Also relevant to this hypothesis, it has recently been reported that there is an excess of males in the siblings of children with autism [31] (e.g. the parents of children with ASC produced more sons than daughters).