“Autism Destroys Families”: An Autistic Social Scientist Responds

An “Autism Epidemic” is a Dangerous and Wrong Interpretation

I’m your friendly neighborhood social scientist, writing in response to recent claims by public officials suggesting that an increase in autism prevalence signals an autism epidemic.

There has been an increase in autism prevalence. More autistic people are being diagnosed now than in the past. The current estimate is that 1 in 31 people in the U.S. are autistic.

That doesn’t mean there’s an epidemic. This is about measurement, not emergence. Some of the confusion might come from not understanding population data. I can help with that. But the “autism epidemic” framing doesn’t just misrepresent data, it stirs up fear and we’ll get into that part shortly.

This narrative also encourages in-fighting among autistic advocates. I am saddened that this has been turned into another “functioning labels” debate in 2025. I thought we knew better. Alas, here we are. 

These narratives sound official, but when public messaging frames autistic people as a “national crisis,” it puts everyone in that 1-in-31 group at risk, and especially those who are multiply marginalized. These folks are already disadvantaged in terms of healthcare, housing, education, voting, transportation, and access to many other aspects of the social world.

As a demographer, I pay attention to these kinds of shifts in meaningful outcomes, or in the measured freedom that people have to be and to do the things they have reason to value (see also: Amartya Sen’s capability approach). These changes tell us some useful things about how the social structure is moving, all of which are more actionable than a frequency table, and more helpful than an imagined epidemic. 

I’ll get to all of that in terms of the possible function of the current public discourse, but first, a quick note about why I’m writing this. If you don’t doubt my credentials, feel free to skip the next part.

My Relevant Experience

Most people know me as an educator and consultant, but I’ve also been doing demographic health research since 2019. I’m currently an ABD Sociology PhD candidate at a top R1 University. My ongoing research is titled Leave No One Behind: Disability, Wellbeing, and National Policy and includes three studies.

My first study looks at subjective well-being and functional disability in Costa Rica, analyzing how perceived safety and regional context relate to well-being outcomes. The second adds a human rights model of disability to the analysis. The third expands across Latin America and the Caribbean, asking how national disability policy affects well-being comparatively, focusing on women.

For those not in the weeds of big data and quantitative methods, I use multiple, nationally-representative population datasets and some complex statistics, guided by a theoretical framework, to answer a simple question: Who is being left behind?

I’ve presented findings from my Costa Rican studies at two Population Association of America (PAA) conferences. I also had a study on women’s empowerment in Ethiopia accepted for PAA 2025.

This background helps me evaluate population health data in the U.S. and to see how public rhetoric like “autism epidemic” and “autism destroys families” and “they will never write a poem” is being used over time to rewrite the public discourse about who needs care and support and who needs to be controlled and tracked. This is the function of the rhetoric sociologically.

I’ve also taught over 100 psychology courses at another R1 university, every fall, spring, and summer since 2004. Sociology and demography is more relevant here, but yes, community and social psychology, and research methods and statistics in psychology make up my background. I’m also autistic. I have ADHD. And I’m disabled. That lived experience is all part of the lens I bring to this topic, too.

Okay! Now, let’s get into the specifics.

Prevalence vs. Incidence: Understanding the Difference

Let’s start here. The observed increase in autism cases is an increase in prevalence: the percentage of people in a population who have a condition.

Some obvious explanations for rising autism prevalence include broader diagnostic criteria and better awareness that autism isn’t exclusive to young White male children. Higher prevalence means more people are counted as having a condition. That’s what prevalence measures: how widespread something is at a given time.

Let’s make up a quick example that is concrete. Say you’re looking at how many adults in a town wear glasses. If 6 in 10 do, that’s a prevalence of 60 percent. You’re measuring how common something is, not when people started wearing them.

Incidence is different. If 2 out of 100 people in that town start wearing glasses this year, that’s incidence. It tells you how many new cases appeared in a time period.

Prevalence can rise even when incidence stays at the same rate. Maybe people in this town stop hiding that they wear glasses. Maybe more folks get access to affordable eye exams. Maybe we just started counting contact lens users as glasses wearers. Those things would all increase the count, right? But what “caused” it? 

Nothing changed about people’s eyes but more people were counted and that’s how we got a higher prevalence rate.

So too with autism. More people are being identified as autistic, but that doesn’t mean more people are necessarily becoming autistic. Let’s take a closer look at factors that help explain that increase in autism prevalence.

 

Why Autism Prevalence Is Rising

There may not be more autistic people these days. There are more people being recognized as autistic. That’s not the same thing. Here are five reasons behind the increase in autism prevalence.

1. Broader Criteria

Autism used to be diagnosed narrowly. The DSM-III (1980) first identified “Infantile Autism” as separate from schizophrenia (Volkmar & McPartland, 2014). By the DSM-5 (2013), the categories were consolidated into Autism Spectrum Disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The DSM-5-TR (2022) clarified the criteria even further (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).

This widening of criteria means people who would have been overlooked are now counted. The prevalence went up. The incidence? Not necessarily.

2. Increased Awareness

There’s more public understanding of autism. More teachers and counselors are trained to recognize it and make referrals. Neurodiversity movements have changed the language towards inclusion. Adults who grew up undiagnosed are now being identified (Schwartz, 2024; Maenner et al., 2020).

By far, the largest increase in autism cases in recent years has been among adults (Grosvenor et al., 2024). Autistic adults diagnosed today in their 30s or 40s existed in the past as undiagnosed autistic children. They didn’t just become autistic now. They’ve always been autistic. It’s part of the diagnostic criteria for that to be thoroughly assessed regarding autism having been present since childhood. We’re just catching up. 

3. Inclusive Diagnosis Across Race, Gender, and Class

Historically, autism studies focused on White male children. Girls, women, and racially minoritized children were underdiagnosed (Loomes et al., 2017). That’s now shifting and in 2020, for the first time, autism prevalence among children was lowest among White children (Grosvenor et al., 2024). 

That’s a correction of well known, historical biases. Until 2016, childhood autism prevalence was highest among White children (Grosvenor et al., 2024). For example, new diagnoses among male children increased by 185% while new diagnoses among female children increased by 305%. This is a narrowing of the gender gap in diagnoses, not an indication that there is something causing more girls to now “become autistic”.

4. Expanded Access

When more families can get evaluations, more children may get diagnosed. Early screenings and public school interventions have changed who gets counted. Accessibility is so important. This is a social and structural shift, not a biological one. 

Prevalence has gone up in part because more people now have access to the systems that count them.

5. Diagnostic Substitution

Autistic young people who may have previously been labeled with “behavior problems” or speech delays are now being correctly identified as autistic. 

This is improved diagnostic accuracy, better diagnostic alignment based on updated criteria and improved clinician training (Shattuck, 2006; Maenner et al., 2020).

What RFK and Trump Are Saying About Autism

At his confirmation hearing in January 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. denied being anti-vaccine, even though his record says otherwise (Firth, 2024; Leonhardt, 2025). The Associated Press wrote a feature story back in 2023 covering some of the people who have been harmed by RFK Jr.’s assorted anti-vaccine and adjacent conspiracy advocacy work over the years (Smith and Swenson, 2023).

In a TIME interview, Donald Trump gestured toward vaccines and autism, saying “There’s something causing it,” and promising “serious testing” (TIME, 2024a, 2024b). On April 15, 2025, RFK called autism “a thousand times more threatening than COVID-19” (HHS, 2025). He has claimed that environmental exposures (such as vaccines) are to blame. And he has hired David Geier, someone who was disciplined for administering unapproved hormone treatments to autistic children, to lead his federal autism study.

David Geier was also disciplined by the State of Maryland for practicing medicine without a license (Maryland Board of Physicians, 2011; Newsweek, 2025). David Geier and his father (who was also sanctioned for unethical conduct and stripped of his medical license) published their findings back in 2006 and they have since been withdrawn by the journal, and widely debunked. 

We already know what the Geiers think “causes autism” and RFK has cited their findings ever since 2006. David Geier believes that “Interactions between mercury, transsulfuration, and androgens” cause “regression into ASD” (Geier & Geier, 2006) and this directly relates to the preservatives in vaccines. How the Geiers arrived at their claims has been among the most widely refuted claims in modern health science.

On April 15, 2025, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department shared a press release updating the US autism prevalence rate to “1 in 31” and adding the following verbiage – 

“‘The autism epidemic has now reached a scale unprecedented in human history because it affects the young,’ said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ‘The risks and costs of this crisis are a thousand times more threatening to our country than COVID-19. Autism is preventable and it is unforgivable that we have not yet identified the underlying causes. We should have had these answers 20 years ago'” (HHS, 2025).

Notice that we already “had these answers 20 years ago” from the Geiers, and they have been thoroughly refuted by the scholarly community. We don’t need to wait until September to know what a large federal autism study led by David Geier may “identify” about the “underlying causes” of autism.

But this rhetoric is functional, and I would like to get into those aspects because it’s where I may be able to offer some unique insight.

Autism as Tragedy, Autism as Threat

“This is an individual tragedy as well. Autism destroys families. More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource which is our children. These are children who should not be, who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them, were fully functional, and then regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re two years old. And these are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children. And we need to put an end to it.”

– Robert F. Kennedy Jr., April 2025 (KBTX, 2025)

The Rhetorical Pattern: Who’s the Target?

I am sharing what I see. And I’m just one person living in fear alongside people at greater risk than I am, but let’s see what you think.

In my current demographic research on disability and well-being in Latin America and the Caribbean, I look at how public policy relates to well-being outcomes, in terms of who is supported and who is being left behind. When I see U.S. political rhetoric about autism, I apply the same sociological lens.

What I’ve observed is a repeatable sentence structure used to stir moral panic. It goes like this: Subject + Harmful action + Victims. 

[Subject] + [Harmful action] + [Victims]

• Immigrants are eating the dogs
• Trans people playing sports harms women athletes
• Vaccines cause autism in children
• Autism destroys families and children

Each sentence presents a super compelling victim worth protecting. Right? “They’re eating the dogs!” We need to protect women athletes! We’ve got autism out here destroying families! And children! Our greatest resource! If we cannot protect women and children, and puppies, what are we even doing?!

But rhetorically, the subject is the real target, and that whole emotional appeal is a distraction. The sentence gets you emotionally invested in the object (dogs, women, children), but the subsequent political action always aims at the subject. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Stay with me.

This is something that sociologist Stanley Cohen (1972) called a moral panic. It’s a socially constructed crisis that targets a marginalized group. Howard Becker (1963) described moral entrepreneurs as the people who define these crises and use them to mobilize control. 

The rhetorical purpose is to define a threat and then justify state response. This kind of pattern doesn’t emerge by accident. And in sociology we have a word for why this process is perpetuated: it is functional.

Let’s apply it to autism.

Autism as Tragedy: Selling the Anti-Vax Agenda

RFK is doing the most here, talking about how autistic children will “never pay taxes” or write a poem and all that. It’s designed to provoke despair. It’s not a diagnosis. He’s a lawyer and an anti-vaccine activist. This is a sales pitch, and it is functional.  

This narrative tugs at the emotional heart strings of parents, and I really do think he has a certain demographic in mind: White, middle-class autism moms with Big Feelings about disability and autistic children with high support needs. This story offers this subgroup a villain (vaccines) and a redemption arc (removal of that villain). It redirects their grief, assuages any guilt they may have felt questioning whether they caused this, and it turns the whole ball of it into political energy.

RFK has long blamed environmental toxins for autism, despite overwhelming consensus from public health researchers to the contrary (Smith & Swenson, 2023). But now he has state-sanctioned power. And he’s now advancing a narrative that autism is a tragedy caused by something we can undo or at least avoid. So. He’s got the attention of the autism moms.

Side note, I hate that he’s playing with the emotions of these parents. In reality, parents of autistic kids, broadly speaking, are exhausted. They have to figure out a lack of educational support and access; how to keep their kids safe with law enforcement (extra so if their kids are not White-passing and/or if they are non-speaking). Parents have to somehow make more money to pay for extra things while also being more present and more available. The loving parents out there are weary enough and it’s not cool to pull their heartstrings like this.

The promised “scientific study” due in September 2025 is being run by ideological appointees, not impartial scientists. In the current U.S. climate, federally-funded research must align with the political leadership or risk funding cuts (HHS, 2025). Whatever this study allegedly claims to have found as the cause(s) of autism (they will probably go with vaccines, but I assume other things will be in there like food dyes and fluoride in the water), it will necessarily align with the Trump administration’s goals. 

Whatever the conclusion, the goal is predetermined. The cause(s) of autism will be enemies of the state. If the findings were due to come out this week, maybe they’d say that Harvard causes autism.

But this is the heart of the anti-vaccine agenda. And to push that agenda, they need victims and tragedy. So autism becomes the cost. Children become the proof. And public health becomes the villain, as we’ve watched it become already. 

The sentence writes itself:
Vaccines cause autism in children. 

“But none of this is about helping autistic children or their parents. It’s not about protecting our most precious resource, the children. It’s not about supporting autistic grown-ups who were autistic children when they were kids. This is all about producing an emotional story strong enough to support the rollback of public health policies.”

– Erika Sanborne, AutisticPhD.com

 

Autism as Threat: Containment by Registry

All of this doesn’t stop at rhetoric, because it creates pathways for funding cuts and the widespread rollback of public health gains. And now there is more of a direct threat as well, as the U.S. is planning the creation of a national autism registry, a centralized system to track autistic Americans. Seven states already have mandatory autism reporting laws. A national registry expands that model, enabling centralized surveillance under the guise of public health research.

So. There’s that now. It is expected to gather data from across federal and private systems, merging data from sources like medical records, lab results, genomic data, and even consumer fitness tracking data such as what my perpetually-disappointed watch logs about my activities (Newsweek, 2025).

The stated goal of the autism registry is to identify the causes of autism. That is wild. As anyone who has ever taken an undergraduate course in research methods can attest, considering the correlates of an outcome of interest does not provide the right information to make causal claims. See also: confounding factors, reverse causality, neglect of common cause, spurious trends, and the unlikelihood that ice cream sales cause the increase in shark attacks every August.

This U.S. autism registry database is a mass collection that sounds like it will probably contain the personally-identifiable information of autistic people, either from multiple sources or it will when merged into profiles. As researchers working with respondent-level data, there are normally multiple levels of safeguards in place to restrict access to this type of data and to depersonalize cases for those who are allowed access. 

And, importantly, there is a core ethical principle called Respect for Persons the tenets of which don’t seem to apply to this autism registry or national autism research whatsoever. For more information about this, read The Belmont Report, unironically hosted on the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services website (HHS, 1979).

We also know that national registries are not neutral. As Foucault (1978) explains, population tracking is a form of biopower, a way for the state to manage and discipline groups through classification. When you create a national registry in the middle of a moral panic of your own creation, you’re not just cataloging people. Period.

Historically, registries have preceded some of the darkest chapters in human history and in disability policy. In the U.S., registries were used to enforce eugenics policies, including forced sterilizations of disabled people and people of color. The Supreme Court’s Buck v. Bell decision (1927) upheld these practices. Internationally, Nazi Germany’s Aktion T4 program began with a registry used to identify disabled children and adults for institutionalization and worse, as it was the Nazi’s Involuntary Euthanasia program. For more on this history, please see PBS’s The Eugenics Crusade (PBS, n.d.).

One aspect of Germany’s Aktion T4 program that comes to mind for me is that part of the rationale was that disabled people “should not propagate themselves” and I think about that today. When the U.S. Supreme Court defended the forced sterilization of intellectually disabled people, the justification was that “three generations of imbeciles is enough” (Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)).

This historical context is relevant because we all actually agree that at least part of “the cause” of autism is autism. In other words, autistic people tend to make autistic children. 

That’s real. The rise in recent adult autism diagnoses comes in part because some parents of autistic kids have had an ah-ha moment, and then scheduled assessments for themselves to follow.

Even the Geiers’ withdrawn and debunked study included the following in their Abstract: “It has long been recognized that there is a genetic component to some ASDs…” (Geier & Geier WITHDRAWN, 2006). 

Once the public has been convinced that autism is dangerous (“autism destroys families”), this autism registry can become a helpful tool for containment, a way for the state to serve the greatest good for the greatest number by containing the dangerous. For example, RFK has suggested “wellness farms” where certain people can be contained and perform labor (Mann, 2025).

Recap of the Argument

Here’s the structure I’m asking you to notice:

• Autism is framed as a tragedy to justify anti-vaccine agendas and public health program cuts
• Autism is framed as a threat to justify surveillance and control
• Autistic people are used as rhetorical tools in both cases
• Multiply marginalized autistic people are at the greatest risk by far

None of this is about helping autistic children, their families, or autistic grown-ups. At best, this is about using autistic people to push forward a policy agenda.

 

What This All Means for Autistic People

The narrative that autism “destroys families” is a story of a threat that needs to be controlled. The logic becomes exactly what RFK said:

“Autism destroys families and destroys our greatest resource which is our children.”

That story positions autism not as a condition to support, certainly not as a neurotype (a neurodiversity-affirming perspective is fully absent from the discourse), but as a danger to eliminate. As before, the subject becomes the target of the policies that will follow, even though the object is what is used to incite emotional responses. 

Autistic people, especially those who are multiply marginalized, are not going into a registry so they can be helped in any way.

Recent prevalence data support this extra concern for racially minoritized kids in the U.S. Among children, autism diagnoses are rising most rapidly among children from racially minoritized backgrounds. In a study covering more than nine million people, researchers found the biggest increases between 2011 and 2022 among Black, Hispanic, and Asian children (Grosvenor et al., 2024). The study noted that these groups had been historically underdiagnosed and are now being identified at higher rates than White children.

In previous decades, these same children may have been labeled as having behavior problems. They were more likely pushed into disciplinary systems or funneled into low-expectation tracks in school. Now they are being diagnosed with autism, and this coincides with autism being a “national emergency.”

What comes next remains to be seen. I’m writing this article on April 24, 2025. Any edits I make after publishing will only be to fix a minor typo or to update a dead link. So based on when you are reading this, you may know some answers that I did not have when this was written. I will leave sociological reflection here as-is.

I do believe that understanding the function of this discursive pattern (subject, harmful action, object) is likely to remain useful in future narratives. I hope it helps you make sense of some of the messiness. 

To the Autistic Readers Out There

You are neither the threat nor the tragedy. You are not a mistake, and not the result of something horrible. You are not the cost. And I am so sorry for all the pain this has caused and will continue to cause.

And if you are someone who will never write a poem or pay taxes, even if you will never fall in love or use the toilet without our help, then know this: It is the duty of the rest of us in society to help as needed. No one can negotiate life on their own, not one person. We all need one another. Some people’s needs are more evident.

Your value is not measured in productivity or taxes. You are not required to prove your humanity or your rights.

Parents of autistic kids, I’m sorry for your stressors. To those of you who love your children and do all the things to keep them safe in this world, I thank you.

And for those reading this who are relatively safe, reject the trap. We don’t win by separating “good autistics” from “tragic autistics.” We don’t win by proving we’re useful. We win by refusing to be used.

To autistic readers abroad: I’m sorry you’re being pulled into this. 

To everyone: Please pay attention. I know everything is hard right now. I share all of this with care and concern, in solidarity.

Want to discuss this topic?

* There is this post on bluesky and this thread on facebook *  

References

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