When did marrying a cousin become socially unacceptable?

[LionBird]

I'm a big Agatha Christie fan and noticed there are quite a few references to cousins being in a relationship. I'm rereading Taken at the Flood currently, which is set in 1946, and the main character is engaged to her cousin and nobody seems to think it's strange! Obviously it was quite common in royal circles too in the 19th century but post-WW2 isn't that long ago so I'm not sure how and when it became unacceptable to have a relationship with a cousin - can anyone shed some light on this?

I read an article about this recently and I'm sure it said that (in the UK) first cousin marriage was once illegal but became legal so royal cousins could marry. Victoria and Albert were cousins.

Living with a seriously disabled sibling can be very hard. It's understandable why she wouldn't want to risk having children.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen is about this very issue. And Fanny and Edmund were brought up together. In Emma also Jane Austen she falls in love with her brother in law who is 16 years older than her and acts throughout the ealier part of the novel as if he is her father or possibly over involved uncle.
So cousin marriage and marrying your brother in law who they referred to as brother was fine late 18th early 19th century.

It’s as the population has become more mobile, there is now absolutely no need for most people to marry a first cousin, and so it feels weird when people do. Years ago, people didn’t move much from the village or area they were born in, so there wasn’t as much choice.

I think actually they would be genetic siblings, if there were no half siblings amongst the parents IYSWIM

Surely that would make it illegal for them to Marry ?

Personally I think a lot of the reservations, other than genetics, are the connotations of keeping wealth and power imbalance within the family - is the younger partner actually happy? Also the ideas of super race/aryan race and dominant genes. It does also feel like an excuse for peadophilia because you can imagine close family members as kids and if you have no boundaries there...

Downs syndrome isn't normally genetic unless a parent has it (which can be mosaic ie so not all the cells have the extra chromosome, so they might not realise it) and in those cases it would be passed from one parent only so the fact they are cousins are irrelevant in this case.

Some things are genetic, some things are not, some things are not normally.
My dd has a condition that is in 99%+ of cases is spontaneous. There are some genetic conditions associated with it, but they normally are more disabled than she is.

You can't put all congenital conditions down to being cousins marrying.

I find it a lot more unacceptable in Uk now than among friends & family when I was growing up elsewhere.

Sikh-heritage friend says in her faith you can't marry closer than your 7th cousin & that the Sikhs make unkind jokes about Muslims who often marry cousins closer in relation than 7th.

I was just about to post the same. I visited a special school and was shocked to see that most of the children there (there were only 30) were Asian and related. Intermarriages within a family meant that the faulty genes were passed on. I think first cousin marriages should be illegal.

It's medically very ill-advised to marry a first cousin as the chance of various genetic defects are much higher. These become even more pronounced in cultures where several generations of cousins marry as then the genetic similarity can become the equivalent of half-siblings. Once you get past 2nd cousins once removed though (eg in the case of the queen and prince philip) you are no more genetically similar than a randomly matched couple.

I think socially for me it's the closeness element that would make it feel unacceptably 'icky' to me. I grew up with my cousins and they feel more like an extension of my siblings so the thought of any sort of romantic involvement with them would feel really wrong. Perhaps in aristocratic circles especially though cousins didn't spend as much time together many years ago so the social element wasn't there.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were also third cousins.

@Notgoodatpoetrybutgreatatlit - He’s not Emma’s brother in law, he’s her sister Isabella’s brother in law.

John and George Knightley marry Isabella and Emma Woodhouse. They aren’t related, although their children will be double cousins.

So apparently double first cousins share 25% of their DNA which is the same amount of DNA half siblings share
Half siblings wouldn't be able to marry
So would Double first cousins?

A Muslim friend whose daughter was having an arranged marriage told me she was very pleased that her daughter was marrying a cousin. She said marrying a family member meant her daughter was still very much part of the family, and far safer than her marrying someone they didn't really know well.

I have a friend who's parents are first cousins - I always found it a bit icky to be honest 🫤 they even look like each other!

Probably around the time people realised the negative affects on the children. First cousin marriage is common in Pakistanis living in the UK and they have the biggest problem with inbred children in the UK.

Marrying a cousin is legally OK (in the UK), and genetically it should be OK if it happens once in a family. It used to be said that this was the cause of the 'village idiot', when in the old days when families did not move very far from their home town, there would be cases of cousins marrying over successive generations.
Now it applies to some ethnic communtities where there are cousins marrying in successive generations, and that over time this can cause some genetic defaults.
So, there has been an attempt to discourage this practise.

In fairness, Iceland has about the same size population as Brighton and Hove.

Yes I was going to say, it's a completely different scenario in Iceland!

Agatha Christie set her books amongst the society she knew, the society she was a part of, the upper-middle classes. In her books the marriage of first cousins is often encouraged by the generation above, to ensure that their sons/daughters/nieces/nephews married 'the right sort', but also to ensure that
'family money' stayed in the family and couldn't be siphoned off elsewhere through divorce. This meant that cousin-marriage in her books were often part of the plot (e.g. Sad Cypress).

I'm not convinced that marriage between first cousins was as acceptable in wider society as it was within Agatha Christie novels.

In the 1940s I'd expect most people didn't have to know anything about genetics, or even have heard of them, to have a basic knowledge of the dangers of inbreeding. They'd know about it from farm animals and pets. They'd know about it from human inbreeding too - where do you think the concepts of 'village idiot' and 'NFNN (Normal for North Norfolk)' came from? Historically it was normal to live your life within a 10-mile radius of where you were born. Yes, the dangers of inbreeding were general knowledge!

With the increased ability to travel, people were more easily able to out-breed, but the general knowledge of the dangers of inbreeding persists, which is why it's still got an ick factor.

I found it odd when a sibling was dating a step relative.

But totally gross that a friend was shagging a first cousin she had grown up with (80s)
Their children were friends ffs. She would take them with her (leaving H at home) for the weekend!

I think I always knew or had been told that familial relationships were 'not acceptable' but have no idea in which era that happened (born 70s)

I've just remembered that my friend used to shaggy her cousin for a few years! They never got married but I always thought it was odd.

It is neither uncommon or unusual and, for some groups it is used as means of keeping property in the family. You should take a look at the Born in Bradford Study, which looked at genetic conditions affecting first cousin marriages, diabetes was a big issue with that. Winifred Robinson on the BBC has been broadcasting about the study since 2007, it is a fascinating series - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m0001kbd

Historically people would refer to distant relatives ie 3rd cousins as their cousin. This happens a lot in period dramas and novels. So the whole marrying your cousin thing didn't usually refer to marrying your parent's sibling's child.

I imagine the decline in how socially acceptable marrying a first cousin was, came with our increased knowledge on genetic abnormalities due to incest.