marrying cousins

[ramalamadingdonk]

I do think it should be illegal to try and prevent birth defects etc. my grandparents were first cousins. it was well known in our family and the community. it wasn't a huge scandal. they were born in the 20s. was it so unheard of??

I'm not sure that banning it would be effective because it is mainly cultural. In Ireland something like 1 in 5 traveller marriages are between cousins. I think it's really unrealistic to think that banning it would change what is a centuries old element of their culture, after all you can just get on a plane and get married abroad for a few grand.

I think education and the offering of confidential genetic testing before marriage and genetic councelling would be more effective in reducing genetic disorders than banning marriage between cousins. I think if you ban it then parents would be more likely to lie about genetic links or be more reluctant to seek help for their children if they need it putting children at more risk than before.

I think @NameChange1936 summed the actual risks vs. perceived risks very well.

The only issue I take with first cousin marriages is with identical twins I think it gets a bit hairy. Although identical twins’ don’t share 100% of the same genes due to genetic mutations, it’s pretty close! So if their respective children marry, they are more like half siblings in effect. First cousins is far too close for me personally, but genetic half siblings is way, way too close.

However, for the tiny, tiny, tiny chance of that scenario playing out it isn’t worth changing a whole law for.

I don't suppose it would matter.
But as a general principle, it's not something to be encouraged.

We foster a little boy who is Romany Gypsy and has many, many genetic defects and global delay due to his parents, their parents and most likely several generations leading up to his birth, all married their first cousins. I don't really know how solvable of how prolific the problem is across the UK though. Could we ban it? Would it happen anyway? It's both sad and hard to remedy.

Well it would be illegal for two brothers or two sisters to marry wouldn't it even though there would be no chance of them conceiving a child together... because it would be seen as morally repugnant.

Two of my great-grandparents were first cousins. It’s really not been that long since it was an unremarkable thing for the upper / upper-middle classes in Britain to do, particularly for those lived in the sticks and were related in some degree to all of their social circle.

It has never been illegal in the UK and only became an issue when some back-bench piece of lobby-fodder mentioned it in a "ten minute bill".

Of all the problems affecting the UK today this is at the very bottom of the pile.

What on earth is ‘morally repugnant’ about it?

OP, there are at least three lengthy current threads on this. Reading them, it’s hard not to think that the posters who are most vociferous about banning cousin marriage are delighted there there are generic conditions to justify their personal ‘ick’.

this was actually what I was interested in finding out, it was the reason I posted. but then I got side tracked by all the interesting information...but this is my thinking, people were much less likely (I think) to leave their communities in previous generations and so dating pool is smaller. my family are working class. but didn't upper classes do it to preserve bloodlines or whatever...so they weren't contaminated by working class blood? and that's why so many of the have horse faces?

Most women in their forties would only have one baby- or two if twins from IVF but then they address genetic disabilities there.

Even if the women in their forties had two babies, that’s still many less that a lot of cousin marriages.

What complicates any legislation is that a one-off first cousin marriage has one level of risk, which is higher than that of two unrelated people marrying, but a marriage where the family tree shows several generations of cousin marriage will have a different (and higher) level of risk.

It blows my mind somewhat that it's advised when breeding animals that any co-efficient of inbreeding (COI) above 5% increases the risk to a potentially unsafe level - not just the risks of genetic illnesses, but also cancer and auto-immune problems, and also potential impacts on fertility and resistance to infection.

First cousin marriage has a COI of 6.25%. That alone would bother me if one of my DC announced an intention to marry one of their cousins.

Arguments about high rates of disability, child mortality etc in places like Bradford that also have high rates of consanguinity don't take into account the fact that those areas - and particularly the communities in those areas that practice cousin marriage (in Bradford, Pakistani Muslims, but in other areas it will be other cultural groups) - also have high levels of socioeconomic deprivation, which has a known impact on health outcomes, including at an epigenetic level
The Born in Bradford study found that socio-economic status alone had no impact on the level of birth defects. Consanguinity is an avoidable known risk, and the consequences can be devastating and are so sad for both the children and their parents.

Edited for typos and to add a bit.

For me the moral sticky bit is not incest but whether you have a right to inflict disability on a child.

I can’t see how anyone could have that right.

Not sure how to fix it - how many consanguinity generations makes risky too risky? Where do non-heritable defect risks like maternal age fit in? Should the state interfere with breeding? Oof.

In America, you can’t sue ivf practices as a child because if they weren’t there you wouldn’t exist. The ‘lucky to be alive’ law isn’t terribly popular for setting the bar that low.

thanks, I didn't even think to look for previous threads. this has been such an eye opener for me, for many reasons

firstly I really thought that 99% of people would be against cousin marriage. which is why I started my OP with a disclaimer

and I really thought that the genetic risk was much worse. I had no idea that it was similar to women over 40! and I hadn't considered that some communities are less likely to have abortions for birth defects

I really thought that the genetic risk was why there was a proposal to make it illegal. I haven't paid much attention to the news stories on it tbh. I 100% agree that we can't make laws because people find things repugnant. I also think people are damn rude

I can't get my head around it.
It feels dirty to me.
My cousins are my family... there could definitely never be any attraction, just as with siblings. And I would find it hugely creepy to know someone fancied their cousin. Of course it is incest.

Surely most people here are grossed out at the thought of shacking up with a cousin?!

Yes, I haven’t looked back at other threads to see whether some fairly repugnant posts about specific cultural groups/ethnicities and low IQs were deleted.

what is the relationship with sex trafficking please...a couple of posters have mentioned it and I can't find the posts now?

The difference is family investment in it. It’s different if you choose your own and they aren’t related. A divorce in a cousin marriage can impact the whole family.

If a specific group have generations on people who are the products of inter-familial breeding pretending that there is no impact is silly. It’s not about stigmatisation of a particular group it’s about saying that specific practice has a negative impact and that if it’s practiced by a specific group you can’t just ignore it because it seems mean.

I think it’s disgust response. Disgust response exists for a reason, it often protects us. It’s not always reliable obviously, It’s why incest leads to a visceral response from most people, theres an instinct that kicks in that is difficult to explain. Like people who experience genetic sexual attraction, most people won’t be able to understand because they can’t get over their instinctive disgust. I actually feel quite sorry for those people.

@supersimkin7 For me the moral sticky bit is not incest but whether you have a right to inflict disability on a child.

And a debate about the morality of that is one thing, but if you start legislating against it then you get into all sorts of legally dubious waters.
What level of intention needs to exist, and at what point in the conception to birth journey, for a parent to be deemed to be "inflicting" disability on a child? If you discover antenatally that your child will have a (hereditary or not) severe disability and choose to continue the pregnancy, are you inflicting those disabilities on the child?
What about mothers who don't take folic acid and their child has spina bifida?

Downs Syndrome is 3x more likely at age 35 than at age 25. (Incidentally, a greater increase than the increase in autosomal recessive conditions amongst married cousins.) Has a 36 year old who conceived a baby with Downs "inflicted" that upon the baby?
What about women who drink and their children have FAS? There was a case a few years ago where a woman with FAS tried to sue her mother, but was ultimately unsuccessful.

It makes for a fascinating debate, but trying to turn it into legislation would be a legal minefield.

When I was in labour at Lewisham hospital we were chatting to a very chatty consultant. I’m not fully sure how to came up (I was in Labour as I said so I’m sure I was a bit wired) but he asked me if my husband and I were related. We thought he was joking and laughed it off and said “ah ya first cousins” but we quickly realised he was serious and reassured him we were not in fact related in any way.
I did ask if it was common, he said it was….

I watched a documentary years ago based on the Pakistani community (on channel 4 I think) and what struck me was the general population of women who agreed first cousin marriages were a bad idea but the religious leaders (wholly men) being largely indifferent to the difficulties it caused in terms of genetic disabilities - happy to be corrected though.

The scientific reasons at the time were that first cousin marriages were more likely to cause genetic disabilities and should be avoided, of course many children of first cousin marriages are fine but the narrowing of the "birth pool" is never a good thing genetically.

I can't imagine being sexually attracted to any of my first cousins, it's weird, ( imo) our parents are siblings and I have known them my entire life
Genetically speaking a one off marriage between two first cousins only has a slightly higher chance of a child being born with birth defects
But it's when generation after generation of first cousins marry and genetic condition, s continues to be passed on yhsy is,when major issues arise

Has a 36 year old who conceived a baby with Downs "inflicted" that upon the baby?

My little superstar's extra chromosome that I "inflicted" on her at age 33 is just part of who she is.

But sadly, many do feel that it would be "inflicted" on their children, hence the 90% termination rate for those whose prenatal tests come out as high chance....

@curliegirlie For the record, my opinion is absolutely NOT that you or any other parent "inflicts" any disability or difference in ability upon their children.
I was just trying to illustrate the difficulties with trying to legislate based upon the idea that parents in a cousin marriage are inflicting disability on their children. Because every conception carries some level of risk; I have friends not unlike yourself, whose antenatal Downs screening was something like 1:5000, both parents in their late 20s, healthy, non smokers, and their baby was born with Downs. My point was that every parent runs the risk of their child having a disability or a genetic or chromosomal condition - it would be impossible to try and legislate against that risk based on some arbitrary cut-off point.
I apologise for any offence I caused you or your daughter - totally unintended ❤️