ADHD and autism are largely heritable: when a child is diagnosed, it is not unusual for one of the parents to recognise themselves in the description. That is what Jools Oliver, wife of chef Jamie Oliver, described in late October 2026. Her story is personal, but science explains this path from child to parent quite well.
- The news: Jools Oliver, 51, was diagnosed with ADHD about four years ago, then with autism after her children's diagnoses.
- The genetics: heritability is estimated at about 74% for ADHD and 80% for autism. That figure describes a population, not a person.
- In parents: in a study of 323 children with ADHD, at least one parent scored above the threshold of an ADHD questionnaire in 41% of families.
- What to do: write down examples, including from your childhood, and talk to your GP or family doctor.
What Jools Oliver said
On the British podcast Lessons From Our Mothers, hosted by Cressida Bonas and Isabella Branson (episode released on 25 October 2026), Jools Oliver said she was diagnosed with ADHD about four years ago, so at around 47. She then learned that some of her children were autistic, thought "my god, that sounds like me", and asked to be assessed: she was diagnosed autistic too.
She does not present it as a superpower: she describes something tiring, and says she spent most of her life believing her difficulties came from something else. But she describes a real bond of understanding with those of her children who are autistic, and says she understands them completely. Her comments were reported on 26 October by Hello! and The Independent.
Late diagnoses are not only a mothers' story: actor Simon Pegg, 56, revealed his ADHD diagnosis on 8 October 2026 on the podcast I'm ADHD! No You're Not.
We found no reliable statistic on how many parents are diagnosed after their child. But the underlying mechanism is well documented: genetics.
Heritability: what twins show
To estimate the role of genes, researchers compare identical twins, who share nearly all their DNA, with non-identical twins, who share about half, or follow millions of siblings in national registers.
- ADHD: a review published in 2019 in Molecular Psychiatry by Stephen Faraone and Henrik Larsson reports a mean heritability of 74% across 37 twin studies.
- Autism: a Swedish study published in 2017 in JAMA (37,570 twin pairs and more than 2.6 million sibling pairs) estimates it at 83%. Another, published in 2019 in JAMA Psychiatry on 2,001,631 children from five countries, 22,156 of them autistic, arrives at about 80%.
Be careful with what this number means. Heritability measures the share of differences between people, in a given population, that is explained by genetic differences. It does not mean that 74% of one person's ADHD comes from their genes, nor that a parent has a 74% "chance" of passing it on. And it is not 100%, which leaves room for other factors. We explain this in more detail in what 37 twin studies actually show about ADHD.
There is no "ADHD gene" or "autism gene" either. For ADHD, the same review explains that each genetic variant, on its own, has a very small effect: part of the heritability comes from many common variants with small effects, another part from rare variants. So a parent can carry part of this predisposition without meeting the criteria for a diagnosis, and a child can be diagnosed while neither parent is. Passing on your genes is nobody's fault.
How many parents are affected?
- ADHD: in a study published in 2010 in The Journal of Pediatrics, of 323 children with ADHD and both their parents, 27% of mothers and 23% of fathers scored above the threshold of a self-report ADHD questionnaire, and at least one parent did in 41% of families. A German study from 2016 (79 families) found 41% of mothers and 51% of fathers, but fewer than half of the families approached had responded.
- Autism: in parents, researchers mostly measure the "broader autism phenotype", milder autistic traits (social reserve, difficulty with the unwritten rules of conversation, rigidity) that do not reach the threshold for a diagnosis. In a 2013 study of 1,692 parents, these traits were found, depending on the dimension measured, in 14 to 23% of parents of autistic children, compared with 5 to 9% of parents in the comparison group.
- Across conditions: in Swedish registers (nearly 1.9 million people), relatives of autistic people (twins, siblings, half-siblings, cousins) more often have ADHD than relatives of non-autistic people, which suggests partly shared genetic factors.
These figures have limits: they mostly come from questionnaires filled in by parents themselves, not from diagnoses. A review of 41 studies on parents of autistic children, published in 2018, found rates ranging from 2.6% to 80% depending on the tool used and the sample. But the 17 studies that had a comparison group all found these traits more common in parents of autistic children. The UK's NICE guideline on ADHD also lists having a close family member diagnosed with ADHD among the situations where ADHD may be more common.
Why it went unnoticed for decades
A parent in their 40s or 50s grew up with different criteria. In a 2015 review in The Lancet Psychiatry, Meng-Chuan Lai and Simon Baron-Cohen describe a "lost generation" of autistic adults who, as children, would not have received a diagnosis of "classic" autism, before the criteria widened and the idea of a spectrum took hold. In adulthood, there is often nobody left to describe early childhood, the person has learned to compensate or camouflage, and other conditions (anxiety, depression) blur the picture.
Women are particularly affected. A 2017 meta-analysis of 54 studies estimates that the male-to-female ratio in autism is closer to 3 to 1 than the often-quoted 4 to 1, and concludes there appears to be a diagnostic gender bias against girls. For ADHD, NICE reminds clinicians that girls and women are less likely to be referred for assessment and may be more likely to receive an incorrect diagnosis of another condition. We cover these mechanisms, including camouflaging, in our article on late ADHD and autism diagnosis in women.
A child's diagnosis changes things: the parent reads the criteria, describes their child's behaviour in detail and sometimes recognises themselves in their own answers. NICE even recommends that when a child is assessed for ADHD, the parents' mental health should be assessed too.
Do you recognise yourself in your child's diagnosis?
Recognising yourself is not a diagnosis, but it is a good reason to talk about it.
- Write down concrete examples from today: organisation, forgetting things, relationships, tiredness after social contact, need for routines. Specific situations are worth more than a general impression. Our article on signs of autism in adults that are often missed can help you put words on them.
- Look for traces of your childhood: school reports, teachers' comments, memories from your parents, brothers or sisters. Assessment relies on your developmental history and on the view of people who know you.
- Talk to your GP or family doctor, and mention your child's diagnosis: it is useful information, and they can refer you. How adult assessment works, and how long it takes, depends on your country and health system.
- To put words on what you experience, our self-assessment questionnaires can help you prepare for the appointment: the adult ADHD questionnaire (ASRS), the AQ-10 for autistic traits and the CAT-Q, which measures social camouflaging. Their result is not a diagnosis: NICE points out that ADHD should not be diagnosed on the basis of a questionnaire alone.
For any question about treatment, talk to your doctor. And as Jools Oliver's experience suggests, understanding how you work can also help you understand your child.
Frequently asked questions
If my child has ADHD, do I necessarily have ADHD?
No. In the study of 323 families mentioned above, neither parent scored above the questionnaire threshold in nearly 6 families out of 10. ADHD depends on many genetic variants with small effects, and its heritability is not 100%.
Does it come more from the mother or the father?
Neither in particular. In the five-country study, the share of the variation in autism risk attributed to an effect specific to the mother was estimated at 0.4% to 1.6%, and the authors conclude this effect is not supported. In parents of autistic children, the 2018 review found milder autistic traits more often in fathers, though not in every study; for ADHD, the two studies mentioned above point in opposite directions. These differences do not tell you which parent it "comes from".
Can you be diagnosed at 45 or 50?
Yes. NICE says ADHD should be considered in all age groups, and, according to Lai and Baron-Cohen's review, a first autism diagnosis in adulthood is now recognised as an important clinical issue. The assessment does, however, look for signs present since childhood, even if nobody noticed them at the time.
References: Lessons From Our Mothers, episode with Jools Oliver (podcast, 25 October 2026); comments reported by G. Strong, Hello!, 26 October 2026 | PA Media, Simon Pegg reveals ADHD diagnosis, The Irish News, 8 October 2026 | Faraone SV, Larsson H (2019). Genetics of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Molecular Psychiatry 24(4):562-575. doi:10.1038/s41380-018-0070-0 (review, mean heritability across 37 twin studies) | Sandin S, Lichtenstein P, Kuja-Halkola R, Hultman C, Larsson H, Reichenberg A (2017). The Heritability of Autism Spectrum Disorder. JAMA 318(12):1182-1184. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.12141 (Swedish cohort, children born 1982 to 2006: 37,570 twin pairs, 2,642,064 full sibling pairs) | Bai D, Yip BHK, Windham GC et al. (2019). Association of Genetic and Environmental Factors With Autism in a 5-Country Cohort. JAMA Psychiatry 76(10):1035-1043. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.1411 (cohort of 2,001,631 children in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Israel and Western Australia; 22,156 with autism) | Takeda T, Stotesbery K, Power T, Ambrosini PJ, Berrettini W, Hakonarson H, Elia J (2010). Parental ADHD status and its association with proband ADHD subtype and severity. The Journal of Pediatrics 157(6):995-1000.e1. doi:10.1016/j.jpeds.2010.05.053 (323 trios, parental ADHD by self-report scale) | Starck M, Grünwald J, Schlarb AA (2016). Occurrence of ADHD in parents of ADHD children in a clinical sample. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment 12:581-588. doi:10.2147/NDT.S100238 (79 families, Germany, questionnaires, 44% response rate) | Sasson NJ, Lam KS, Childress D, Parlier M, Daniels JL, Piven J (2013). The broad autism phenotype questionnaire: prevalence and diagnostic classification. Autism Research 6:134-143. doi:10.1002/aur.1272 (1,692 parents) | Rubenstein E, Chawla D (2018). Broader autism phenotype in parents of children with autism: a systematic review of percentage estimates. Journal of Child and Family Studies 27(6):1705-1720. doi:10.1007/s10826-018-1026-3 (systematic review, 41 studies) | Ghirardi L, Brikell I, Kuja-Halkola R et al. (2018). The familial co-aggregation of ASD and ADHD: a register-based cohort study. Molecular Psychiatry 23(2):257-262. doi:10.1038/mp.2017.17 (Swedish registers, 1,899,654 people) | Lai MC, Baron-Cohen S (2015). Identifying the lost generation of adults with autism spectrum conditions. The Lancet Psychiatry 2(11):1013-1027. doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(15)00277-1 (review) | Loomes R, Hull L, Mandy WPL (2017). What Is the Male-to-Female Ratio in Autism Spectrum Disorder? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 56(6):466-474. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2017.03.013 (54 studies) | Hull L, Mandy W, Lai MC et al. (2019). Development and Validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 49(3):819-833. doi:10.1007/s10803-018-3792-6 (354 autistic and 478 non-autistic adults) | NICE (2018). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: diagnosis and management (NG87), recommendations 1.2.1, 1.2.2 and 1.3.1 to 1.3.5