Should it be illegal for 1st cousins to marry?

[brasty]

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?

Then yes it should if they are willingly having children knowing there is a risk of disability or illness.

You know that lots of people have children knowing there is a risk of disability or illness? Should they be banned from marrying if they have a genetic issue? No - thought not!

My family had arranged marriages between cousins up to 4 generations ago. There were all sorts of issues. Thalassemia and eccentricities were extremely common 4 generations ago. My grandmother told me it was planned that my grandparents would marry because they were not directly related, actually he was Sephardic and she was ashkenazi. My father went on to marry a non Jew (who converted) and I too have married a non Jew (no conversion).

The serious genetic conditions have gone but I have always questioned if previous close marriages is why DS has autism. Looking back isn't say there have been quite a few family members with learning difficulties. Up until my generation it was all very much hidden.

I am not sure if we should be passing legislation on who can reproduce with whom. The devastation of having multiple DC with complex disabilities was enough to bring about cultural changes, stopping close marriages.

While the big issues have gone my sister and I are both carriers for thalassemia. Tay Sachs has just about been eliminated and Turners syndrome is only in one cousin from my generation.

I think it should probably be illegal.

Basically, cousin marriage is common in cultures where it is used as a means of promoting clannishness and concentrating wealth within particular groups--oh, and in modern contexts, it has also been used as a kind of unofficial immigration pathway. It serves no defendable "purpose" in a modern, rich, liberal democracy.

Cross-culturally, there is a powerful inverse correlation between consanguinity and liberal democracy.

marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/cousin-marriage-and-democracy.html

I will confess to not reading every post, but was shocked to find out recently, that 19% of child deaths where I live, are due to incest. So 1 in 5 of child deaths are due to inter family relationships. This truly shocked me in this day and age

not only illegal but also immoral in my country.thus it produce a lot of story about lovers in kinship end up in a great tragedy.

There is a strong cultural taboo in most of the UK against cousin marriages - hence all the cries of "yuck" etc. Those taboos exist for a reason - to expand the gene pool.

I don't think making it illegal will help. I think education will. It is fine if a few random people marry their cousins - unlikely to have much effect statistically - but if it becomes the norm, not taboo, in a community then there will be a big effect. So people saying "yuck" might sound like 13 year olds but they are 13 year olds who are being Darwinian.

For people saying what about older women, older men, etc. Don't a lot of people think of this when reproducing? Most women I know have a kind of cut-off for the age they will have their last child. And it is usually under 40. yes there are loads of women who have children over 40 but they are aware of the increased risks. Awareness of the increased risks (and risks of infertility) mean most women will have their children by their late 30s. It probably wouldn't be great to have a community in which the majority of reproduction was by women over 40.

Ditto older fathers. Most men aren't able to provide for children when they are 50 or 60 so it is a moot point but actually I would think a bit about conceiving a child with a much older man - I am aware of the risks. As a pp said, people speculate that the genetic mutation that introduced haemophaelia into the british royal family occurred because of the advanced age of Victoria's father.

If you want to see small genetic pool in action look at the Hapsburgs of Spain. Loads of cousin marriages and several uncle/niece marriages (but as many people pointed out on this thread they never met each other at all before marrying so why would they feel bad about this), culminating in Carlos II, the last Hapsburg of Spain.

YANBU.In my country (and in most mediterranean countries I think) it is illegal for 1st and 2nd cousins to marry. Perhaps that culture makes it a form of incest, in my opinion....
as far as the genetics are consirned, i live in a very small place and yes there are many diseases that are due to the people geting married in close relations eg. our parents took state funded dna tests before our child was born to examine that.

rock that 'risk' is just as vague in the stats on cousin union

And you can see nonsense correlations all through this thread 'my auntie's friend married her cousin and their son only has one leg, its disgusting!'

Its as if people think making cousin's having babies illegal would wipe out childhood disability and illness.

It won't. If looked at the thousands of children I had worked with over the years only a handful would have parents who were consanguineous

Those that did have related parents had a wide range of disabilities. Only a few were proven to be genetic.

My friends parents are 1st cousins and she has epilepsy. It should be illegal

But if her parents carry the gene then they could have passed it on to their child regardless of who they married. The majority of people with epilepsy are not the product of cousins inter-marrying.

That comment is the result of folk tales about deformed babies being born of shady unions thewhite.
It has no place in the modern world. Not now we have actual science and stuff.

I think there is still this vague idea in people's heads that disability is a form of punishment for sin. Inscest is a sin so it causes disability. I don't think they believe it on a conscious level but its there, in the back of the brain. Its not surprising as it was the 'truth' for centuries until relatively recently.

But we have facts now.

rock that 'risk' is just as vague in the stats on cousin union
........
Well, anything can be proved or disproved with stats - and across the board, I daresay married cousins do only account for a small percentage of disability, but I was referring to my experience of one particular culture.

I do get your point, but for me, as with most people I imagine, it's not about being prejudiced, it's about doing what we can to produce healthy offspring, and if making marriage between first cousins illegal improves everyone's chances, perhaps it should be illegal.....?

I know Mrs DV but its depressing isn't it? I would do anything for my DC not to have epilepsy but unfortunately either me, or my DH or both of us carry the gene (we have never been tested to find out who carries it as we did not want to go down the 'it's your fault' route) We had no idea of this until my DC was diagnosed. We are not related to each other at all by the way. Some of the comments on this thread are awful. No one wants to have a disabled child.

We have an autosomal dominant genetic condition in our family (my dc I mean) and my DH and I are from opposite ends of the world. In his culture first cousins do marry, but as standard practice they are offered a blood test before marriage to ascertain if there are any shared genetic conditions.

We have a geneticist who has worked in communities in UK where they mostly marry first cousins. He said every one carries at least one 'faulty' gene, therefore the rough guide for every pregnancy of abnormalities is 1%. First cousins it may go up to 3-4% (with no known inherited conditions) Contrary to popular belief, only marrying first cousins every time does not concentrate the gene pool that much.

Shouldnt even need to be a question.

Shouldn't need to be asked. I have cousins I've only ever met once in my life and I wouldn't marry them ever. It's just not right they are family even if you never see each other you don't marry and have sex with family. It's wrong and gross.

The problem isn't really first cousins marrying: it's people who are the children of first cousins marrying their first cousins, which increases the risk of genetic defects significantly. This is sometimes called 'double first cousin marriage'. The article in Wikipedia on Cousin marriage quotes this relationship as being the same degree of consanguinity as half-siblings - which of course is not legal.

The problem is that in communities where first cousin marriage is valued, and the risks of double first cousin marriage are not understood, the cultural value placed on first cousin marriages leads to further cousin marriages down the generations, producing these higher degrees of consanguinity.

Oh, this thread has been eye-opening!

I had no idea about the culture of marrying your first cousins! For all of you offended people who are the children of first cousins or married them, would you marry your cousins/want your children to marry your siblings' kids?
You should understand that for most people outside that culture the idea of having sex with your cousin is not far off at all from having sex with your sibling, surely you'd get where 'ugh' comes from?

I'm from Russia originally and there is no law against it because most people in their right mind would be shocked at the idea of it. Actually there is something to say for coming from a large country with a very large and ethnically mixed genetic pool and inbreeding being viewed as something very unwelcome, say after moving to UK I wondered what is this cystic fibrosis(and quite a few other locally common conditions) every newborn is being tested for.

I come from a family of doctors on one side and had never heard of it, and here it seems to be very common. After reading this thread I discovered that the frequency of cystic fibrosis in UK is one in 2.500, while in Russia is one in 10.000. I truly suspect now that's island living and your ancestors marrying your relatives to ''thank' for. Also another thing which was noticeable to me just anecdotally, is tinnitus.

Never knew what it was before meeting British people, and no-one Russian I know heard of a(chronic) condition like that, I actually asked a couple of Russian GPs and they NEVER in their life came across a patient with chronic tinnitus. It runs in my English DH's family(not born with it! but comes on at some point in life and stays forever :( ) and I've met no end of people here who have it or know somebody who has it. That's not to say it doesn't exist in Russia but the scale is not comparable. I'd say the same about autism, but there I cannot be sure that it's more to do with recognising/diagnosing it, then actually a lack of autistic people in Russia.

I remember being very struck by a couple which used to attend the same playgroup in the local children's centre. By looks they were obviously of Indian/Pakistani heritage, and on first sight I was 100% sure they were twins brother and sister. Obviously being brother and sister they couldn't be identical twins, but they looked as identical as a man and a woman can.
They had very, very distinctive look about them, quite striking, handsome but nearly bordering on ugly in its distinctiveness, big long-eyelashed eyes kind of upturned on outer corners, and very upturned tips of noses, identical noses, big cupid-bow mouths.
Then through their baby I realised they were a couple! I felt pretty uneasy about them being a couple, I did think wonder how must it feel having sex with someone nearly like looking in the mirror, just a mirror of an opposite sex? But I never for a million years assumed they might be related, and now I feel so stupid. Of course they were related

For people who dismiss having children with your aunt's/uncle's children as the same risk as having children after 40, even if it was exactly the same risk, that's not great risk odds!
I have a few kids, spread out over 20 years and two marriages :), I was always grateful they were all healthy and thought I was just lucky, though actually now think I have a varied genetic pool to thank for too, anyway, since turning 40 I've been completely terrified of getting pregnant not just because I don't want to have more DCs, but it's the risk of genetic disorders which plays on my mind first and foremost, and I don't think I could consider an abortion.

Fair enough to try for a baby after 40 (with awareness of risks) if it didn't happen before for whatever reasons, but most people who have children already by 40 don't just go trying to conceive after 40 thinking oh it will be fine, I know many people who had a child in their 40s and it was fine.

Also surely if you know first cousins had kids and they are 'healthy', yes, they might not be affected by a genetic disorder, but it's not to say that they don't have much higher chances of becoming carriers of one. Which they will have no idea about until they may end up with a child with that condition, through meeting and having kids with another carrier.

So yeah, even if the idea of marrying someone with whom you could potentially have a conversation along the lines of 'you were grandma's favourite grandchild/no, you were her favourite' does seem really weird to me, each to their own, but to defend it as a practise and argue the risks could be dismissed is clearly unwise.

. I truly suspect now that's island living and your ancestors marrying your relatives to ''thank' for.

Except our island has a history of being invaded, as much as we invaded other nations, so don't think the UK generally can be classed as a backward culture that's riddled with in-bred disabilities.

Personally, I don't agree with cousins marrying, but here we don't have the lack of tolerance endemic in Russia.

Where I live (Bradford) this is very common and there are lots of children with genetic problems and learning difficulties as a result. I think it's fine as a one off but when it keeps happening the gene pool becomes very small.

Also, you don't have to be married to have children. Just saying...

Should definitely be illegal - the only CAB cases I've seen with cousins marrying were when the marriage was a little more "arranged" than usual. Sign of a bad thing

Except our island has a history of being invaded, as much as we invaded other nations, so don't think the UK generally can be classed as a backward culture that's riddled with in-bred disabilities.

I thought about it, and I guess it's good from a health of nation point of view that it happened, otherwise common genetic diseases would be potentially more common. In Russia newborns get tested for a couple as well.
No need to be defensive , I love this country and my DH is English. To be honest there is not much intolerance towards cousin marriages in Russia because it is so rare there is nothing to be intolerant towards, however I live not far from the Fens and have heard no end of rude jokes from the local born and bred scorning the inbred qualities of the Fenlanders

When I was a student in the 80s I worked with children with severe disabilities in Bradford and there was a high proportion of children of first cousin marriages amongst those children. In one family of nine children, seven had congenital disabilities, and the mother had had two stillborn children. It was heartbreaking.