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?

Yes - the Catholic Church definitely forbade it from early Middle Ages afaik .
It was considered Incestous .
I'm from a very Catholic central European area and I remember finding all those references to cousin marriages (like Mr Collins wanting to marry one of his dear cousins in P&P) really weird and quite disturbing when I first started reading British literature, like Austin.

JaninaDuszejko is right- Haemophilia was present in royal families because they were all descended from Queen Victoria, who was a carrier, meaning she had one affected X chromosome. It wasn't present in the families before and the most likely theory is that one of her parents, probably her father, passed down a mutated copy. There's lots of really good genetic reasons against cousin marriage but haemophilia wasn't caused by this.

When people started looking like the Habsburg family and having the brain cells of a demented squirrel.

Inbreeding in humans is foolish, unnecessary and driven by pure stupidity. You only have to look at what it did to the Habsburg family and what it’s done to German Shepherds to see it’s needlessly foolish to breed with anyone closely related to you.

😰

The hæmophilia in the European royal families is clearly traced back to Victoria. The tsarina was a granddaughter of Victoria.

Royal Family Tree

Maybe modern transport and communication has a little to do with it. Statistically we are attracted to "familiar strangers".
We all know our cousins due to being able to see each other quite frequenty. Mostly our cousins are not strangers.

Education about birth defects in closely related people is widely known and easily spread too.

Exactly. Haemophilia is genetically carried and the risk often comes from one parent. Categorically nothing to do with age related factors or inbreeding. The misinformation people post on the internet is concerning.

I live in an Arab country where it’s very common to marry your cousin. Genetic testing is required before all marriages to see if you are both carriers of any health issues and you can be deemed ‘incompatible’

In small rural communities in centuries past it was more common. Because if you lived very rurally and it was several hours walk to the next town/village then there's just not a large pool of available partners. Not like today where people move around a lot and we travel more and meet people who were brought up a long way away. In the 19th century or before if you grew up in (for example) Penzance, Inverness or Carlisle, you more than likely married someone else who was brought up there too.

In genetic terms a one-off cousin marriage isn't an issue. It's when the pattern of intermarriage is carried on through the generations, this has never been part of British culture.

Probably became less prevalent when the increased occurrence of genetic health issues was confirmed.

It was more common when people lived in smaller villages, and there were fewer opportunities to meet people.

I’m a midwife and have looked after quite a few Asian consanguinous couples. There have been genetic issues with those babies that came to light within a year. One little one particularly has some fairly serious issues. So, still common in some demographics and these are first cousins marrying.

It's genetic but the mutation arose because of the age of Victoria's father, older fathers ar more likely to have genetic defects in their sperm.

I have a child with a,genetic disorder that has caused complex disabilities for him it's De Novo in his case but it can be inherited from a parent this type of condition could cause many children to have the same disabilities in families where inter familial marriage is common

This isn't true. First cousins share 12.5% of their DNA. That means they are more likely to have the same dangerous recessive copies of genes that can cause genetic defects. If they had children with people unrelated to them, it's much less likely that they would both have the same dangerous recessive copy of the gene. So even one set of cousins having children are an issue genetically speaking.

I think it's weird, they're family, we share the same grandparents. More so for me as my grandmother was an identical twin, so my Dad's cousins and their children are like cousins and aunts and uncles to me (we saw each other as often as well) so even 1st, 2nd,3rd cousins would be weird.

No it hasn't been.

And unfortunately there's a thing where it's not uncommon to be physically attracted to someone you don't know is genetically related to you.

There's concerns for donor children who find out their biological father is one of these pricks whose mislead and deceived mothers/clinics about their donations.

There's also a large number of donor children who were told their donor was x, when this was completely fabricated especially when there was an overall shortage of donor's or dodgy men wygod complexes that worked at these clinics.

I remember reading that siblings separated at birth have a likelihood of marrying because they have a genetic pull (as in different mothers same father) which I found fascinating. I always thought genetically we wanted different genes to make offspring stronger. I wondered if women being on the pill and the fact it distorts our ability to define the genetic mismatch might be party to blame and other influences such as finding similar faces attractive took over instinct?

No, this is not factual. Her mother could have been a carrier of Haemophilia.

You are right, the age of Victoria's father is irrelevant, but the Romanov's haemophilia B was inherited from Queen Victoria.

Yes, they would. Also, your children will share higher percentages of DNA than you quoteendogmathe endogamy. If you all did a commercial DNA test out have a fun time.

I went to a school that was predominantly Asian, and several of the girls (it was a single-sex school) of Indian heritage had parents who were first cousins. Apparently it's relatively common in India.

Re: Agatha Christie, the term 'cousin' would have included second and even possibly third cousins.

What? I think most people know about cousin marriages in parts of South Asia but Uncle-nieces? Wtf. That’s awful 😢

My nephew is four, and was really upset that he couldn't marry his baby brother. He really cheered up when I told him he was allowed to marry my son.

It was a joke, but I wonder how many cases of gay cousin marriage there are?

Why would you want to Marry your cousin anyway ,your parents are siblings and you have the same grandparents

The risk of first cousins having a child with a genetic defect is about double that of an unrelated couple having a child with a genetic defect. In a country where cousin marriages are very rare I don't think the doubling of the risk is worth making kinship marriages illegal.