A child’s development can be affected by many things, but new studies have linked autism to parents’ age. According to new studies, kids born to parents with ages of 35 years or older have higher chances of autism.  

As reported by spectrumnews.org, a large scale study was conducted by researchers from Copenhagen Centre for Social Evolution with 1.7 million children born during 1978 through 2009 in Denmark. It was found that 10,703 of the individuals were diagnosed with autism. The individuals were split depending on the parents’ ages and the time of birth. The researcher then measured how autism cases varied with age.

 It was found that kids born to fathers with ages 35-60 had a 24 percent higher chance of having autism compared to those with fathers ages 31-34, while kids born to mothers ages 32-46 had a 34 percent higher chance of developing autism compared to those with mothers ages 29-31.

 While younger parents are at a lower risk for having kids with autism, they are not completely out of the woods as reported by nationportal.com. Children born to young parents are at risk for having schizophrenia, especially those with very young mothers, while those with older parents were not.

 It was also discovered that the risk for children developing schizophrenia or autism could be added to if there were big age gaps between the parents. However researchers found it might be avoidable if there was a large enough gap between an older father and younger mother according to scienceworldreport.com.

 Despite the evidence that parents’ age can be a factor in a child developing autism, it should be known that most children will develop normally as reported by The Huffington Post.