Adopted-away Offspring-Reply

In Reply.—  Dr Krims' main point appears to be that we do not show that adoptee antisocial behavior is correlated with biologic parent antisocial personality alone. This is quite true as shown by the figures in Table 1 from the article (as pointed out by Dr Krims) where one of 12 children of antisocial personality background was antisocial in contrast to 0 of 66 in the remaining groups. However, the main thrust of my article is that it is antisocial behavior in biologic parents that correlates with offspring antisocial personality, as witnessed by the fact that retarded mothers with antisocial behavior have offspring who are antisocial (Table 1, three of six adoptees from this background are antisocial). Dr Krims' criticism that retarded mothers might more easily be led into various behaviors without necessarily being antisocial themselves does not explain why it is the retarded with antisocial behavior who have antisocial offspring and