Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Should it be illegal for 1st cousins to marry?

555 replies

brasty · 06/06/2017 20:38

My DP's parents are 1st cousins, and DP has a genetic illness. Marrying your 1st cousin increases the chances of genetic illness. So I wonder if we should simply make it illegal for 1st cousins to marry? Obviously anyone married would stay so, it would only apply to new marriages.
AIBU?

OP posts:
LRDtheFeministDragon · 07/06/2017 17:35

I don't think 1st cousin marriages are inherently wrong or bad. But, like a PP said, you can't really argue with science.

No shit.

But why are you expressing surprise that people explain to you the distinctions between social conditioning and scientific understanding?

MommaL · 07/06/2017 17:36

I've an aunt and uncle who were 1 st cousins who married and had 4 sons. Another cousin (same side of the family) dated one of those sons for a while. It was...odd but in my opinion, its bon of my business. People can love who they as long as no one gets hurt and its not straight incest

LRDtheFeministDragon · 07/06/2017 17:37

(Incidentally, I have heard that there's an increasing feeling that children of older parents who become older parents themselves, do increase their risks. If you inherit a mutated copy of a gene, you might easily transmit it - the gene doesn't 'know' that the reason it's mutated is the age of your parent, rather than anything else. But I borrow this explanation from DP, who is a biologist, and do not know how to assess it for myself.)

bbismad · 07/06/2017 17:43

Apparently the risk of genetic defect or infant mortality is only the same as that of a woman over 40... so as weird as it sounds to me, no I don't think it should be banned. Or would you ban women over 40 having kids too...or anyone else where their is a raised risk of defect? I personally think that we should should all keep our noses out of what goes on in other people's bedrooms...

caffeinestream · 07/06/2017 17:43

Because I don't really understand the attraction to being involved with a family member - regardless of whether you grew up together or didn't meet until your twenties.

Surely that's not an uncommon view?

LRDtheFeministDragon · 07/06/2017 17:46

Not uncommon, but, well, it is a peculiar lack of imagination.

Do you understand the attraction between every single legal pairing, at a visceral level? Does your heart leap and your pulse quicken at the idea of two gay men, or two gay women, or nine consenting adults wearing Morris dancing outfits?

Perhaps it does, and you're just much more broad-minded than most people. But I'd hazard a guess that, for most of us, it is actually quite normal not to be able to empathise with the attraction we know exists between other couples. What's odd, in my view, is the assumption that your lack of empathy really matters, in some deep and meaningful way, that deserves to sit alongside genuine concerns such as the medical issues discussed on this thread.

Minaktinga · 07/06/2017 17:55

My parents are first cousins and all of their kids are fine. Apart from the extra ears.

UnbornMortificado · 07/06/2017 18:02

Yuk - hence why Travellers do it, children come out a total mess!!!!

Really?! Reported fucking rude.

DH's great grandparents were second cousins (and yucky evidently Hmm) iirc but there's been no marrying each other in the family for generations now.

I don't know anyone my age (late 20's) in the community married to there cousins, although I have 50 million cousins half of who I've never met so I do understand how it can easily happen.

rockcake · 07/06/2017 18:05

YY I agree @waltermittythesequel but I also don't see how banning the practise in the 1st place will make a difference when you can still have sex/children outside of marriage.

If it was illegal though there'd be far far fewer cases of cousins having sex/babies - especially as lots of marriages in some cultures are engineered by the families and they just don't have babies out of wedlock.

I work in schools across London with a huge Bengali majority and the number of cases of disability, autism etc is disproportionately high and 1st cousin married parents isn't uncommon. 100 years is nothing genetically so even in cases where the parents, grandparents and great grandparents aren't related, there can still be consequences further down the line.

A lot of the Bengali women I work with openly discuss this issue and are also dismayed by it. Truly, I hardly know one person that doesn't have some disability in their wider, if not immediate family and it puts a huge strain on the education system in inner London.

MissBax · 07/06/2017 18:11

or nine consenting adults wearing Morris dancing outfits? - am I the only one? 😉

SooSmith · 07/06/2017 18:12

I thought that Queen Victoria is considered to be the source of hemophilia in the Royal Family? Not sure it had anything to do with her marrying her cousin.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 07/06/2017 18:17

Grin Sadly, missbax, I have it on good authority it's not even a minority taste. I heard there's a MNer who writes Morris-dancer erotic novels.

Jaxhog · 07/06/2017 18:19

Very common in several cultures. Still gross though.

AlexRose5 · 07/06/2017 18:21

Thekissbyklimt13...
Incorrect there... it's perfectly legal to marry a first cousin in ROI.
I'm from there. A couple I used to babysit for were first cousins and married.
There were four kids. The eldest was perfectly normal , (wife had this child pre marriage to her cousin) the other three were bizarre... just utterly strange and creepy... both in appearance and behaviour. I hate saying that about kids but it's true. So although you're incorrect to say it's illegal in ROI, I think maybe it should be!

UnbornMortificado · 07/06/2017 18:22

Looking back my brother once slept with our second cousin but he didn't know she was his cousin at the time as his parentage has always been iffy.

They were both upset when they found out years down the line.

Considering it's something like 2 out of 10 fathers aren't raising they're biological child (or some such figure it's been quoted upthread) this must be quite common.

MissBax · 07/06/2017 18:23

LRDtheFeministDragon 😂 brilliant!

NKFell · 07/06/2017 18:28

There's things in common and there's things in common

Grandparents, other cousins, aunts and uncles...not something I want in common with my partner.

yourcarisnotadiscovery · 07/06/2017 18:39

DS's father is not a blood relative but I still had a genetic disability that was unknown and I passed on to my child. Unless you screen everyone who plans to have children or is of child-bearing age you cannot determine what will happen. If a couple and their families feel happy about first cousins marrying then surely it is up to them, however, with the knowledge that genetic risks are high for their offspring, it would be advisable to them to be tested and it seems awareness is high. Can't make it illegal though, especially as lots of people have pointed out, many children are conceived outside marriage and that marriage between first cousins is very acceptable in some communities.

SherbrookeFosterer · 07/06/2017 18:43

Not sure it should be illegal, but indicates a degree of laziness in one's efforts to search for a husband or wife, doesn't it!

Tomorrowillbeachicken · 07/06/2017 18:46

Yes because of the possible health implications it should be.

rockcake · 07/06/2017 18:59

It does beggar belief that out of however many billions of people there are in the world, some people can't see further than their own cousins. Can't help it, I just do find it creepy

ChardonnaysPrettySister · 07/06/2017 19:00

Some people's world is very small, and not always by choice, Rockcake.

PsychedelicSheep · 07/06/2017 19:01

It's perfectly understandable people find it a bit icky, because of the westermarck effect.

My children are the absolute spit of their cousins, seriously they could be siblings - there's a huge family resemblance. I like to think I'm a pretty progressive parent but I would NOT be happy one bit if one of them was shagging their cousin.

hackmum · 07/06/2017 19:01

rockcake: "If it was illegal though there'd be far far fewer cases of cousins having sex/babies - especially as lots of marriages in some cultures are engineered by the families and they just don't have babies out of wedlock."

This is bang on. It mostly happens in communities where the marriage is engineered by the parents (so not spontaneous sexual attraction) and where cohabiting isn't acceptable. It's not as if those communities simply happen to have loads of people who are romantically attracted to their relatives.