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Autism Traits and Parenting

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Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Raising children and providing them with protection and care in order to ensure their healthy social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development into adulthood are a critical task of parents. As parenting is known to impact children’s developmental outcomes, examining parenting in the context of autism is an important focus of inquiry.

Historical Background

Little remains known about the lives of adults with autism (Howlin and Magiati 2017), including parenting children. As parenting practices and parenting style are related to the developmental and psychological outcomes of children (Belsky and de Haan 2011), being autistic or having autism traits has the potential to influence parenting.

Autism is associated with difficulties in social communication and social reciprocity, including social-emotional difficulties (American Psychiatric Association (APA) 2013) which can impact the quality of social interactions. Social-cognitive difficulties are also common, including...

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Correspondence to Cheryl Dissanayake .

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Dissanayake, C., Richdale, A., Kolivas, N. (2020). Autism Traits and Parenting. In: Volkmar, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_102462-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_102462-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6435-8

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