Milestones Without Blame: A Study That Names Disparity Without Deficit
When the “normalization” frame is removed, the whole picture changes
The research paper "Young Adulthood Milestones and Supports Within the Context of Autism" from Radey et all at Florida State University isn’t perfect. It doesn’t include autistic co-authors. It doesn’t interrogate every frame it inherits. But it does something that many studies fail to do: it describes disparities faced by autistic young adults without treating them as broken for experiencing those disparities.
That distinction — naming disparity without blaming difference — matters.
Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, the researchers looked at 22-year-old autistic and non-autistic young adults across a range of outcomes: employment, financial independence, relationships, health, housing and public benefit use. The disparities were stark. Autistic young adults were less likely to be employed full time. More likely to report anxiety, depression or work-limiting conditions. More likely to rely on public assistance. Less likely to live independently or be in a romantic relationship.
And yet: nowhere in the study are autistic people framed as deficient.
Instead, the authors write plainly about hardship and structure, identifying systems — like inaccessible housing, insufficient income supports and gaps in service continuity — as the harm mechanisms. These systems benefit institutions that define success through productivity and independence while offloading support responsibilities onto families. They cite systemic gaps. They acknowledge the role of poverty, service inaccessibility and policy design. They situate their findings within a broader recognition that "traditional" adulthood milestones are increasingly out of reach — not just for autistic people, but for a generation.
Even more importantly, they name the limitations of their own study. They admit they did not include autistic collaborators. They specify that the data may not fully reflect those with higher support needs. They resist the temptation to generalize.
That kind of precision matters too.
By AAB standards, this study reflects a constructive trend — even if not authored by autistic voices. It names structural harm, avoids compliance-first logic and refuses to confuse disparity with deficiency. It is not authored by autistic people, and it does not reframe the benchmarks it uses. But it does name structural harm, and it avoids compliance-first logic. It does not mistake disparity for deficiency. It calls for expanded access to housing, healthcare, income supports and community inclusion — and while it doesn’t explicitly reject normalization, it also doesn’t center it. That absence, in a field where normalization is often the baseline, is itself a notable shift.
It doesn’t treat autistic co-residence with family as failure. It treats it as data. It doesn’t call unmet milestones a shortcoming. It calls them unmet. That’s a difference with impact.
Too often, autism research wraps harm in politeness — soft words draped over sharp systems, as if euphemism could soften the weight of unmet needs. It uses terms like "support" while reinforcing a deficit frame. This study doesn’t do that. Its language is restrained, but not euphemistic. Its gaze is comparative, but not moralizing. And its conclusion is clear: these disparities are real, and they require structural change.
AAB doesn’t critique to posture. We critique because framing has consequences. But when researchers show that you can describe challenge without pathologizing people, that deserves to be named too. Especially in a field where so much writing still collapses difficulty into dysfunction.
So here’s what this study shows us: It is possible to track outcomes without turning difference into deficit. It is possible to measure struggle without assuming failure. It is possible — even within conventional research design — to write about autistic people without writing over us.
We don’t need every study to be radical. But we do need research that resists folding autistic difference into deficit. That refuses to treat hardship as failure. That understands the frame is part of the outcome. This one gets closer than most. But we need more studies that don’t quietly reinforce the norm as the goal. This one threads that line. That’s worth learning from.