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’ve never known anyone who married their cousin (so far) I suspect it was more common back in the day. I assume child mortality being what it was that most children who had severe genetic abnormalities wouldn’t have made it to adulthood.

I think it should be banned tbh. There’s plenty of evidence it leads to developmental defects and given there is an associated cost to the public purse it seems reasonable to prevent these unions.

Most cultures where this happen have high rates of children with genetic and other abnormalities. It should be banned.

We were friends with a couple who were married and had four beautiful children. A few months into the friendship they told us they were first cousins. I felt sorry for them as they seemed to feel it was a dirty secret they had to carry. I believe they had to have a blood test before they had kids.

My dad is one of 6, and 3 married their first cousins including my dad. They all married between 1987 to 2000. Out of the ten children born to the couples who married their first cousin, one had a genetic issue.

Most of the children who were born in these marriages lived in the uk bar four who still remain living in Kashmir (my dads 5 siblings now have 21 kids between them - this included three from my dad).

Eight of us have gotten married between 2014 to the present day. NONE of us have chosen to marry our cousins even though some of us were asked, myself included. We said no and it was accepted. Most youngsters do not want to marry their cousins anymore. Aside from one of us who had an arranged marriage to a family friend, the rest of us all found our spouse when we met them on a social occasion or online or at work.

Attitudes are changing. I'm sure some people still do marry a cousin but its been a long time since I attended a wedding in the kashmiri community that was a cousin marriage.

I think there is a difference between majority protestant and majority catholic societies/countries. The Catholic church banned cousin marriages even up to 7 degrees (that's quite over the top really) which Henry VIII removed. I grew up in a majority Catholic region, and while cousin marriage is technically legal, I have never come across it in real life, ever. I remember reading Jane Austen for the first time and going "eeewww" when she talked about cousins marrying.

Yes I have a Catholic and Protestant side of the family and my Catholic side is very genetically diverse with people nearly always marrying not only people unrelated but usually from hundreds of miles away. My Protestant side lived in 1 area for hundreds of years and apparently my 5th great grandparents (or something like that) were cousins.

The only cousin marriage I know (of) IRL is my mum’s friend’s son, who married his female cousin. It was awful, they were raised as cousins and the whole family were in total shock when they ‘came out’.

I really object to it and think it’s morally unjustifiable.

It goes back further than the Catholic church and wider too, many if not most societies have some ways of avoiding consanguinity. There is some genetic evidence from stone age sites that they avoided cousin marriage, many animal species have ways of avoiding mating with close relatives. Genetically there is really nothing that would support it.

I’ve found reading this thread really interesting. I wasn’t aware of the ick factor others are describing so it isn’t universal. Perhaps some communities have a stronger catholic influence, historically.

I’m interested in the strength of the revulsion- any attempt to be logical about it has been met with pushback.

Being logical about it doesn’t mean anyone is promoting it, or approves of it. It just challenges the ‘ick’.

Logically there are other behaviours that are equally costly to the NHS, and to the health of individuals and their DC.

Coercion is a separate issue. Societal encouragement of cousin marriage is the opposite face of societal disapproval of cousin marriage. Both are societal, not inherent.

We owe future generations the best shot possible at health and we are failing them in many ways, not just this one way.

This is encouraging. As far as I’m aware it’s not so much 1 cousin marriage that causes genetic issues, it’s repeated cousin marriage which leads to a line of inbreeding and the risks go up with every generation.

https://news.sky.com/story/mp-speaks-out-against-proposal-to-ban-first-cousin-marriages-13271018

Corbyn’s ally 🤷‍♀️

I didn’t have a single muslim friend when I was growing up who wanted to marry their cousin. I think the younger generation have much stronger feelings about not doing so which is great news. I always felt tbh that the “keep wealth in the family” thing was bollocks otherwise a lot of those communities would be loaded. I think it has more to do with control.

I imagine that in very clannish families things like ignoring domestic abuse etc is routine because it’s not like you can just say “fred the fucker has been hitting me so I’m leaving him” you will end up with pressure form your own mum and dad, aunt and uncle, your husbands spouses (who are also your cousins) possibly your own siblings who may be married into the same nuclear family. I personally think it’s a practice which make it really easy to exert social control on women.

I don't know about having the 'ick', because I'm not 14, but I really do find it strange that people would want to marry their first cousin. They may not be an immediate relative, but they're a close relative, so it's a hard no from me.

@Chucklesisters yes I've read this is a deeply controlling worrying state of affairs for women because they are further trapped and controlled not only by cultural and religious constraints but by their family. Buried deep below layer upon layer of control.

I sincerely hope so yet we have MPs, in Britain in 2025, stand up to defend cousin marriage with ‘keeping wealth in families’ as a positive given! Corbyn and his ‘allies’ are truly disgusting

I think the term cousins doesn't have to refer to first cousins. In my DH's family (Ireland) there is no distinction made between first, second, third etc cousins. Everyone is a cousin even across the generations. I remember the same growing up, my parents referring to someone as a cousin even if the family relationship was quite distant.

They were all girls so I don’t know about the guys. I’m not surprised to see men defending it tbh, men will defend anything which protects their own advantage.

Of course cousin doesn’t have to mean first cousin, but there is a distinction between a first cousin and a second cousin once removed (for example). People know the difference even though they might just say cousin for convenience. I’m in Ireland and have never met many of my second cousins.

I was always taught that the historic concept of the 'village idiot' was due to the fact that in the past, people rarely travelled outside of their home village, and that there was too much inbreeding (ie cousin marriages) over successive generations.
Now that more people move away to university or work, cousin marriages are less common in the UK generally, with the exception of some immigrant communities.
My understanding is that the occasional cousin marriage is OK, but not continually doing so over successive generations.
I don't think you can make a law about this, but maybe it should not be encouraged.

They were from that group, yes.

I was surprised, given the prohibitions within the Orthodox church but it turned out that only one family within the group was Orthodox - and they had a very different outlook on many things. The others were also Christian, but from a different church.

DC’s cousins parents (ex DP’s brother and SIL, also his cousin) are first cousins. Cultural, but other siblings chose their own partners. They have 5 healthy DC.

I've said on another thread that I know one person - older than I am - who married his first cousin. However, it was a second marriage for both of them and their adult children came from their first marriages.

I recall hearing my mother and a cousin discussing their shock over a neighbour marrying a cousin. That was back in the '60s.

So far as my own family tree is concerned, on the Scottish side of the family I noticed the same surname appearing a couple of times in the 1600s, and I did wonder.

In former Yugoslavia, they'll refer to cousins - even second and more remote cousins as 'brothers and sisters'. Your parents' cousins are your 'aunts' and 'uncles'.

I've read up on it, and apparently the nomenclature used was seen as important in remote areas in order to avoid inbreeding.

I feel it was ok back in the '70s when I was growing up.
In fact I had an aunt and uncle (actually second cousins to me) living in the same street as me whos' kids married their cousins (and yes I mean a brother and sister from 1 aunt and uncle married a brother and sister from another!)😬
They had kids and everybody had the right amount of toes and fingers!

Did make for some very confusing family get togethers though. Thinking about it I had numerous second cousins, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc and half of them I had no idea how we were related!!LOL😆

The article is written in a slightly odd way. It seems to spend a lot of time implying that nurses etc are needing to be hired primarily to care for the results of inbreeding. If you read down though it seems like the main focus is preventative- community outreach, providing education about the possible health risks of cousin marriages and working with related couples to do genetic testing and other steps to prevent the likelihood of children born with disorders. It's basically a good, proactive thing but if you skim read it/only read the headline you might think it was the NHS having to bring in nurses to deal with the volume of inbred children that they aren't doing anything about.

It’s always been legal, but more common in certain cultures.

Medically, it’s not considered a very good idea now.