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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

...to feel this about cousin relationships?

300 replies

AliceAforethought · 04/03/2019 23:40

I was chatting with an acquaintance yesterday (a fellow school mum) and she mentioned that a cousin of hers was married to their own first cousin (on the other side, not related to the school mum). I may have said an apparently not too interested “Oh really?” but inside I thought “Eww!”.
The school mum laughed and said “the children seem normal... so far!”

I know it’s legal, but I can’t help but have a feeling of unease/ distaste about cousin relationships. AIBU to feel this? I read some time ago that the risks to any resultant children are not great, but then more recently that it was greater than previously thought.
The school mum clearly felt there was something a bit off about it, too!

Am fully prepared to be told IABU, but wondered if others felt like this? Sleeping with a cousin just seems to have a bit of an ick factor to me!

OP posts:
BejamNostalgia · 05/03/2019 02:32

Didn’t Adam and Eves children procreate, we are all descended from them?

That’s a story bruv.

BejamNostalgia · 05/03/2019 02:33

Didn’t Adam and Eves children procreate, we are all descended from them?

And one of their kids ended up a murderer so hardly a good example.

BejamNostalgia · 05/03/2019 02:35

PS. I’ve done my best to try and explain it up there, but I’m sure someone who knows about this stuff will be able to correct me and explain it better.

Justagirlwholovesaboy · 05/03/2019 02:42

@BejamNostalgia hey that murderer is your relative, be respectful 😂

Justagirlwholovesaboy · 05/03/2019 02:44

@BejamNostalgia that was sarcasm bruv!

ThriftyMcThrifty · 05/03/2019 02:51

Utterly gross. I think it’s only a step removed from incest.

Livingoncake · 05/03/2019 02:54

I would rather be celibate my whole life than marry any of my cousins.

It’s only a stone’s throw away from a sibling relationship, really. Yuk.

Didn’t the heroine of Mansfield Park marry her first cousin in the end?

SecretWitch · 05/03/2019 03:11

Meh. My two cousins married each other.They have five lovely, talented children. Marriage going on almost thirty years.

BejamNostalgia · 05/03/2019 03:36

justagirl I was being sarcastic too. 😆 We’re obviously soul sisters with the same sense of humour.

BejamNostalgia · 05/03/2019 03:55

Or maybe soul cousins 😆

mathanxiety · 05/03/2019 04:39

PanickAttack I have a whopping 66 first cousins, spread between my mum's side and my dad's.

I have hundreds of second cousins.

I still managed to avoid marrying any of them.

sashh · 05/03/2019 05:06

It's fairly normal in Pakistani / muslim families.

The problem with genetics and marrying cousins isn't when it's the odd marriage here and there but when you marry your cousin, and your parents were cousins as were your grandparents.

The genetic pool ends up having little variation and any genetic illness that is inherited from both parents becomes more common.

I wouldn't go for compulsory genetic testing and banning marriage but there does need to be education and genetic testing should be an option.

Look at the Jewish community and Tay sachs

BejamNostalgia · 05/03/2019 05:09

OMG math, how did he manage that? Where are you from? One of my old friends is the middle of about 70 children because she comes from a part of Nigerian society where polygamy is normal.

Kind of a strange story about that, although her Dad had polygamous marriages, whenever his daughters got married, he would take them for a walk around his compound and tell his daughters if anything ever went wrong or a hand was ever laid on her she could always come back there because it was her home.

tattooq · 05/03/2019 05:21

I just think it's incredibly selfish to even take the risk of having children when your genes are so closely linked. There are loads of options of people to fall in love with, why pick a family member? It doesn't matter if you didn't grow up with them, it's the mixing of family genes which makes it incesty.

SeaweedDress · 05/03/2019 05:22

You realise that ‘ewww’ is not a scientific argument, right? Hmm

And that the risk for genetic abnormalities for a single cousin marriage is only about the same as having a child when older?

mathanxiety · 05/03/2019 05:42

Bejam, mum was from a family of eight children and dad was from one of eleven. Dad's dad had ten siblings, his mum had seven or eight, mum's dad had four siblings and her mum had one half sister.

Irish family...

FurrySlipperBoots · 05/03/2019 05:44

@SeaweedDress

It might not be scientific, but a very valid point of view don't you think? It would be unspeakably wrong for brothers to fuck, even though they can't get each other pregnant and create inbred offspring. Cousins are only 'diluted siblings' really.

Waytooearly · 05/03/2019 05:57

I don't know what all you English people are ewwing about! When I first read Jane Austen as an American teenager I was like, 'Wait a minute, I thought those two were cousins but now they're talking about marriage, I must be totally lost...' And then the slow dawn of 'Eewwwwwww...'

But joking aside, I recently became good friends with someone from a Middle Eastern family where first cousin marriage is the norm. It's been fascinating to me to learn about that. For this person, growing up, male and female cousins would start to have a bit of distance from one another as they moved into adolescence, knowing about the potential for marriage.

They know all about the genetic risks but the family cohesion is worth it. It makes for an enormously close interrelated family group (with all the good things and bad things that go with that). This friend is trying to buck the trend by dating a (gasp) non-cousin and it's becoming a family scandal.

mathanxiety · 05/03/2019 05:59

You must have never heard of Appalachia, Waytooearly.

mathanxiety · 05/03/2019 06:02

SeaweedDress, the problem is that it tends not to be a one off. When it happens, it tends to be part of a widespread pattern and longstanding tradition, and there are many horrible and completely avoidable tragedies as a reesult.

brookshelley · 05/03/2019 06:10

BejamNostalgia not sure why you think it's weird that your friend's dad didn't want his daughters to experience domestic violence, just because he was polygamous. The two don't necessarily go hand in hand.

Gwenhwyfar · 05/03/2019 06:11

"Unless you have the same reaction when you look at the queen and her husband."

I think that's much worse. I think they're 3rd cousins, but the they're related in multiple ways and royals and aristocrats are inbred going back centuries.

" I had a friend when I was a child and her mother's sister was married to her father's brother. "

There's a setup like this in my family. Only one of the couples have children so there are no double-cousins. It's not a problem in itself, but I suppose a problem for the gene pool as a whole if it keeps happening.

The film Ae Fond Kiss showed a Pakistani family justifying arranged cousin marriage.

ThumbWitchesAbroad · 05/03/2019 06:12

I agree with you when it's first cousins, it's a bit too close for comfort, and when it happens too often in a family you do start to get genetic problems due to inbreeding. But that's when it happens several times across the generations.

I have no issue with second cousins marrying (where the parents are first cousins and the grandparents are siblings) - UNLESS there has been more inter-family marriage already.

Birdsgottafly · 05/03/2019 06:13

"There have been programmes on the BBC regarding the problems caused by multi generation cousin marriages within the Pakistani community"

As said, "multi generations", of Cousins, is the issue.

@FurrySlipperBoots "It might not be scientific, but a very valid point of view don't you think?"

Like some of the points of view around how different one race can be from White people? Of course it isn't valid and if it isn't backed up by science, it is pure prejudice.

As said, any risk is less than if a Mother is late 30's.

" Cousins are only 'diluted siblings' really".

I think it might be strange if you grew up together, but like a lot of people, I didn't. Medically, Cousins aren't diluted Siblings, you can be a closer genetic match with a stranger.

@Thymeout,how is that relevant?. If one Parent has the gene then the children will have MD. If its your Father's Cousin and its the male line that carries the gene, the male Cousin won't necessarily carry it.

Which is why they allowed Cousin marriages, in the US as long as they had genetic testing. From those tests, they found out how low the risks actually were.

@BejamNostalgia, I have Nigerian friends. The Families are very involved in each others marriages and life. If there are issues, both sets of Parents and other Family members will speak to both sides and the Minister (of whatever religion) will also get involved. Big Family meetings are held about things. Another friend from Zimbabwe said the same.

AriadneCrete · 05/03/2019 06:14

I’m not particularly close to my cousins and there are some I’ve never met, and I still think it’s gross.

@FurrySlipperBoots I thought of Suze and Tarquin in the Shopaholic books too! I was always amazed that nothing was said about it and everybody went along with it as if it was completely normal.