Why Growing Up Feels Impossible when you're Autistic
The Autism Milestone Paradox
Not to make this about me… because it seems like y’all hate it when I do that (only one comment on last week article, ouch) but WE PASSED 2000 SUBSCRIBERS 🎉 So happy and thankful you’ve joined/are here can’t promise that I’ll stop oversharing but I do promise to keep posting and doing whatever I can to turn this into a true community.
Gen Z thinks it’s aging faster than millennials—ironic, given that the milestones defining adulthood are further out of reach than ever. University costs more, the job market is a mess, and no one’s even dating, let alone having kids. What it means to grow up is shifting as economic and personal challenges force us to redefine adulthood, abandoning the conventional timeline to create our own paths. While this might sound liberating, and society may eventually adopt a “you do you” mindset, in the meantime, this broken system has created a mess that’s increasingly difficult for autistic people to navigate.
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Introducing The Autism Milestone Paradox
Part of realising you’re autistic later in life is noticing the gaps between where you are and where you ‘should be’ now sure, the shoulds were created without us in mind but if everyone else is able to reach them the million dollar question is ‘why can’t we?’ and the answer is because or brains are wired differently.
When first thinking about the mess society is in at the moment I was kind of happy people were being forced to question what it means to be an adult but then I thought about the reality of the situations we currently find ourselves in, introducing the Autism Milestone Paradox, adulthood milestones are moving further out of reach and the self-accommodations required to reach them cost more than ever before.
Moving milestones
First-time buyers are facing the toughest conditions for purchasing a home in the last 70 years. Owning a home isn’t everything, but being in a position to do so signifies, among other things, financial stability and freedom. However, only 22% of autistic people are in any form of employment, and 75% live with their parents.
That data is from 2021, and conditions have only worsened since then, meaning things have likely deteriorated even more for autistic people. We know that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives tend to take a back seat during economic downturns, so the schemes and training that once helped us enter the workforce are harder to find, and living at home has become the norm.
The Cost of Accommodations
It’s really hard to be autistic—and by “hard,” I mean expensive. Everything hinges on your ability to earn money, and giving 40 hours of yourself to an employer might seem like a simple ask, but maintaining a career isn’t as easy as just showing up to work. There are the frozen meals you have to buy because you’re too burned out at the end of the day to cook and meal prep is overwhelming, the weekends you can’t relax because, no matter how hard you try, you can’t stay on top of chores during the week, and the taxis you have to take because you misplaced your access pass (again) and were running late.
We’ve been forced to find our own ways to make it work, but now the specialised support, therapy, assistive technology, and even downtime to recharge come at a much higher cost.
Stunted Growth
There’s no one way to be an adult, but these conditions are delaying how younger generations mature and stunting the growth of autistic people. We’ve created our own accommodations to meet basic needs, but even then, we’re not guaranteed access to the next milestone. We’re stuck in a cycle of funding our current accommodations just to survive, leaving us without the resources to reach the next stage of life.
How can we reshape society’s expectations to ensure that the future isn’t just accessible for everyone, but truly sustainable for autistic individuals too?
BIG fan of this!
49 and lost. Managed to support a family for several years but mentally it was like riding a tiger a lot of the time. Alternating periods of employment, and then unemployment following either layoff, termination for poor productivity in burnout, or quitting in the throes of meltdown, with all the scrambling each transition in and out of employment and health insurance demands... I'm literally burned out on burnout itself at this point... and all the misbehavior on my part trying to cope with all these boom/bust success/failure cycles... eventually my first wife gave up on me just like so many employers, friends, and family over the years, and filed for divorce, because just what I needed at that point was another emotional tailspin... over and over it seems like I need and cry out for help and instead get "I'm done, go fix yourself." And at this point I'm finally acknowledging I can't do this all on my own but that on its own doesn't magically figure out or materialize what exact help I need, which I can't even claim to know let alone explain. I'm starting to give up on the idea of being self supporting but having no idea what there is to fall back on or how.