What about Dad?

What about Dad?

Having been a stay@home dad for our special needs sons for many years, I have a different perspective about autism dads, and (at the risk of appearing to be complaining, bemoaning my lot in life, searching for pity or attention, or feeling unappreciated by my own family, none of which are true) I believe it is time to begin recognizing and addressing the needs and contributions of autism dads.

Day after day on social media we see memes, links to mom-specific pages, t-shirt advertisements, and odes to the super-human moms of special needs children.

I get it.  

In most instances, it is the mom who spends the lioness’ share of the time with these children.  They need  interaction with other mothers, the time away to de-stress and regain some perspective, and frankly, at the risk of being accused of sexism or gender stereotyping, women tend to do a better job getting together to support each other than do men.  It is part of their nature.

Think about it.  

Compared to the number of organizations dedicated to supporting special needs moms, when was the last time you heard about organizations supporting the dads of special needs children?

When was the last time you saw a meme celebrating the importance of dads in raising special needs children?

How often are the efforts and contributions of dads in raising special needs children celebrated - or even just mentioned - publicly, as are those of moms?

You see, where society assumes that moms need support and encouragement (and rightfully so), it likewise assumes that fathers are these unmoved rocks who silently and solitarily soldier on, neither needing nor desiring the company and input of other men who are faced with the same battles.

In many respects, that is almost unavoidable.  Many dads are working during the day.  I can't begin to count the many times I took our sons to the playground during the day to find myself the sole father among dozens of mothers, being eyed suspiciously, and having no one with whom to interact because most of the other dads were working.  When dads get home at night, they attend to home and vehicle repairs, kids’ activities, or the need to give mom a break.  On top of that, what are most other dads doing? The same things.  Working during the day, trying to attend to family and projects at night.  

  

So getting together with other dads is incredibly difficult.

And because men are expected by society to be unmoved, unfeeling rocks, there are very few resources dedicated to supporting them.  Let’s face it, in recent years society has, in its ongoing war on masculinity, gone out of its way to de-value men in general, dads in particular.

It is time for this to change.

Although schedules make it difficult, as does the natural inclination of many men (reinforced by societal stereotypes about men) to tough out their circumstances by themselves, it is time for the creation of organizations that can address the needs of autism dads, that can help facilitate the camaraderie they need, and help them to understand that they are not alone in this battle for their children.  They have questions that need answers, they face battles for which they need resources, and they need to know that their contributions to raising special needs children are important and valued.  And at the end of the day, sometimes they, too, just need to get away for a while to unplug.

I have been blessed with a small group of men who, on several occasions, have gone out of their way to provide me with time to just be one of the guys – but not all men have been so blessed.  It is time for this to change.

So, with Father's Day approaching, what about dad?

My Personal Hypothesis...

I just posted this in response to another posting, and I feel the need to post it openly here as well.

I have my own hypothesis regarding the explosion in the incidence of autism, as of today now estimated by the CDC to be 1 in 59.

Autism has been around for generations.  The term was first used in 1911, but the incidence was historically very low. In the 1970s and '80s, the incidence of autism was roughly 1 in 2,000. But something happened around that time that appears to coincide with the explosion in the incidence of autism we have witnessed since then: the development and use of recombinant bovine growth hormone (RBGH). Development, marketing and use of RBGH went into overdrive during the 1970s and '80s in order to increase beef and milk production; an uncle of mine used it on his cattle farm before they really established guidelines about what would be considered "safe" dosages. If a little was good, then a lot of it must have been even better. It brought on earlier sexual maturity, meaning cows could begin breeding and calving at an earlier age, it increased milk production, and it enabled cattle to pack on muscle at an accelerated rate. The use of RBGH led to the development of the mega farms that have become so common - assembly line techniques applied to the beef and milk industries.

Only one small problem: while the FDA signed off on the use of RBGH, NO LONG TERM HUMAN SAFETY STUDIES WERE EVER CONDUCTED.

I believe that the overuse of growth hormones, particularly RBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), plays a major role in the widespread onset of autism, taking a condition that was once quite rare and turning it into the epidemic we are witnessing today. Moreover, I believe the effects are CUMULATIVE. Individually, each cow receives only small (microgram) dosages of RBGH. Multiplied over the millions of cows that receive it each year, however, that amount present in our food supply is magnified by many orders of magnitude. And this is on top of the hormones infants receive from their mothers and naturally produce in their own bodies as they ingest milk and other products derived from cattle. Science has confirmed that onset of puberty in humans has been accelerating over the years, now occurring in girls beginning at age 10 and in boys at about age 11. While many in the medical and scientific communities put this down to better nutrition, I believe the overuse of RBGH is ALSO having an effect. We administer it to animals (on top of what their own bodies already produce) in order to accelerate biological development. What if the increased amounts aren't being metabolized by cows as completely as they are supposed to and are instead passed on to humans through the milk we drink and the meat we eat? We would then be ingesting hormones on top of what our bodies already produce, resulting in hormone overloads that are passed from generation to generation - cumulatively.

I have suspected a link between RBGH and autism for many years, but what really solidified it in my mind was a conversation I had with a graduate of Michigan State's animal husbandry program. One of the things they study? The use of RBGH in cattle. As she and I conversed, I began to lay out my hypothesis; she immediately caught on to the direction I was going and broke in with information I did not previously have. She explained that, in addition to all the effects I listed earlier, RBGH was used to achieve another objective: making cows more docile and easier to handle. She explained that RBGH accelerates brain growth for the first 2-3 years - and then brings it to an abrupt standstill. In cows, this makes them docile and easier to handle. In humans, however, the results could be very different. I know that, in my own son, I watched impressive development for approximately the first two years of his life, at which time it all came to a screeching halt.

I fully understand that what I have is conjecture, but the overall effects and timing of those effects associated with the overuse of RBGH is too much for me to ignore.

The problem is this: IF scientists were to ever seriously study this potential link and establish its validity, they would refuse to do anything about it, because doing so would mean that our entire food processing and distribution system would have to be completely dismantled and rebuilt from top to bottom.

National Sanctity of Human Life Day 2018