It affects men and women equally, and it can be passed on to a son or a daughter. A person with Autosomal Dominant RP has a one in two risk of passing on the condition to one of their children. This is because he or she will contribute one chromosome from each pair to a child. Depending on whether the chromosome carries the abnormal gene or its normal counterpart, the child will be affected or not. Think of this as the chance of tossing a coin and getting it to come up heads.
Chance actually has no memory and neither does nature.
You have the same chance of a coin coming up heads irrespective of the number of times you have tossed it. In other words, if you have Autosomal Dominant RP and you already have a child with the condition, you still have a one in two chance of having the next child affected as well. In some families, Autosomal Dominant RP has been known to exist for several generations while in others it may have been there for only two generations. In yet other families, the condition may appear to jump a generation, but usually an unaffected person will not pass the condition to their children. It does have to start somewhere so that some people who have no affected relatives may carry the original mutation.