To think that 1st Cousin Marriage should be illegal

[stucknoue]

Background: as part of my job I rent out halls, they are very popular for Asian parties and weddings and my clients are lovely, often bringing me food and inviting me to their celebrations.

Over the past couple of months I've unfortunately had to rent the hall for child funeral meals twice to the same family, the kids were cousins and had the same rare genetic condition. In talking to their grandad he revealed that he and his wife were cousins, then going on to tell me that the parents of the sadly deceased children were also cousins. I looked up that cousin marriage increases genetic conditions 3 fold, the more generations that have practiced it then the higher the probability. With our knowledge of science surely this practice should be outlawed?

Oh ffs. I absolutely despair sometimes. Acknowledging that a certain practice is more common in a certain race is not racism. Jesus, some people need to get a grip.

Yes, OP, of course it shouldn't happen; those poor little kids 😔

However, as stated by a pp; how would/could it be stopped? Hopefully by raising awareness the practice may begin to decline?

Drabarni

You literally said it was sweet FA to do with anyone regarding the link I posted that is to do with child abuse. So yes you did. Arguments like "you can't tell another culture or anybody how to live" means we can't have any laws to protect anybody.

Sorry, posted too soon.

Yes, second cousin marriages count as consanguinous.

@leckford White English people do do this, and worse of course. People don’t shout hysteria about the sizeable number of women (it does always seem to be the women) walking around with children born from parental abuse or “consensual” brother sister relationship do they?

Worse than this happens in British culture and is obviously illegal. People don’t shout about it because they don’t know about it, and because there is often no common cultural thread attaching white British families who are brought to the authorities attention.

And as many replies have illustrated, lots of people don’t know about the genetic issues around Pakistani/ Bangladeshi first cousins having children either

There are cultural practices that are harmful, staying live and let live condones those acts.

The relatives I mentioned ^^ are not Romany or Irish. The problem their children have is because they each have a recessive gene which brings about the condition when the dominant gene is absent, a1 in 4 chance of that happening in each pg.

There was no indication that either parent might have this gene, we know a fair amount about our family, going back 4 or 5 generations, and it would have shown up if a child had been born with that condition before.

As it is, no reason to fear that the pair of them would have genetic problems, until the children were born.

I think that if you're going to marry a close relative, you should have genetic testing, which won't show up everything anyway, but may pick up some things.

Rather than forbidding the practice, make testing mandatory.

@hiphopchick would you say being against FGM counts as racist?

Actually it isn't more prevalent in all Asian cultures just a particular one

This isn’t an ‘Asian’ problem. Cousin marriages are common amongst all Muslim cultures and races but the genetic issues are most prevalent amongst South Asian muslims because they are the ones least likely to abort unhealthy fetuses / request additional ultrasounds / trust their doctors. Things, however, are changing.

The stats posted above seem to disagree with that heyjude with both bagladeshi and Pakistani communities having higher levels but also Hindu, Jain, and Sikhs having higher levels than the U.K.

A lot of ‘in family’ cleft palette issues amongst Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, for example, are caused because women don’t take prenatals not because the parents are cousins

Channel 4 “Dispatches” covered this in 2010.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=kyNP3s5mxI8

There’s also the “Born In Bradford” study which is ongoing and seeks to address the high levels of childhood illness in Bradford especially. It’s not completely focused on cousin marriage and genetic illnesses, but that forms quite a big part of it IIRC.

borninbradford.nhs.uk/our-findings/different-findings-in-a-nutshell/babies-born-with-serious-conditions/

Tbh I think it’s an impossible battle to fight. Some cultural practices are too ingrained, not to mention the notion that genetic illnesses are “God’s will” so 🤷‍♀️

@Teddybear45 true but they’re also more likely to be the ones living in the U.K. (there are far more Pakistani Brit’s than Saudis for example) so that’s why they’re being discussed as a group

I think there's a huge difference between marrying cousins and the stuff people are adding, but whilst they are:

We have laws here and look at our society, it's disgraceful.
Murders, paedo's Police grooming children, churches allowing it to happen.
We need to put our own society in order before we look at others.

I'm just going to say sorry for derailing about other cultural traditions, I was just trying to point out why "it's cultural" is a shitty excuse because it leads all sorts of horrific things being passed of as sweet FA to do with us...

@Drabarni how exactly are we supposed to get rid of paedo's?

@Passthecherrycoke - bullshit. Most Hindu and Sikh people have an ‘5-8 maternal generation’ rule when it comes to marrying people from the same religion. That means if 2 people are from the same caste an elder from each family will trace back the family tree for 8 generations - if they share a maternal grandmother then the marriage can’t happen.

Murders, paedo's Police grooming children, churches allowing it to happen.

I agree with you there, but I also think if there were no consequences because all these things were legal, then they would increase... There's no law to punish somebody who abuses somebody else, and yeah the law doesn't always work how it should, but could you imagine growing up in a world where abusing a child carried no consequences at all regardless of whether there is enough evidence because there are no laws

I’m quoting the statistics linked above teddy45. Pakistani 30% Hindus at 15% -
Everyone was much lower but the U.K. population 0.003%. Its shown on the previous page I believe.

I know that these religions have rules preventing inter family marriage- was also briefly discussed a page or two back

@Haworthia - Pakistani people from Bradford don’t do a lot of things for their kids - vaccinations for example. There’s a herd mentality there (gotten from Pakistani villages) that’s bigger than cousin marriages. It’s why a lot of young educated Muslims run from Bradford at the earliest opportunity.

Drabari's view is very depressing.

A woman I work with got married in Mexico (no reason other than exotic destination) and had to do a blood test to prove her and her fiancé weren't related. It came as part of the wedding package.

MrsFezziweg it isn't racist to state facts at all, but that isn't really happening here. The link that Span posted for example had a very misleading title. At the bottom of the article the health minister herself said that the figures were misleading because of the very small sample. Lots of posters have attributed this "Pakistani/Muslim" problem to the spiralling costs of the NHS without quoting any medical facts. The 'damning' article stated that only 9% of the children (who died) were Pakistani. The reason I feel so strongly about this is because these myths become stereotyped and it can affect how HCP treat children (and their families) who have genetic abnormalities. A few posters have said that Pakistanis who marry cousins should not be in receipt of NHS treatment (presumably based on false, alarmist media reports) and this type of attitude is hugely damaging for families affected and also on the stigma that can surround chromosomal defects. Here in NI the Travellers are the "problem" even though they account for a tiny fraction of CA's and I think it always comes back to categorizing the undeserving Other.

I am white British, my cousins parent's were first cousins and two of my cousin's ended up needing organ transplants because of the genetic issue worsened by their parent's being related. It is a problem.

Teddy do you have a source for that? My d's was born with a cleft lip and palate as part of his syndrome and I was told that folic acid has had a very positive affect on the decline of neural tube defects, but absolutely none on CL+/P, which is multifactorial.