To care that my children’s great grandparents were first cousins?

[Antipoodean]

Not particularly unusual perhaps, but I come from a very diverse gene pool myself (different hemispheres). I only learnt that my MIL’s parents were first cousins after we had children. Would this bother you? My dcs are healthy and I am not worried about them, I’d have had them
with the knowledge, it’s just a bit disconcerting.

Personally I don’t think cousins should be together, yes it may be legal in some countries. But that is your brother or sisters kid… with your kid. Too close in genae pool if you ask me. But this happened along time ago, kids are healthy and lovely I bet, DH is ok, his parents ok, so I would just brush it under the carpet. And move on. You can’t change it, bringing it up may cause problems so I would just move on and try and forget it best you can.

I think chance and randomness have their part to play and if your kids are healthy I wouldn’t worry.

My aunt and her husband are 4th cousins. They had no idea until their child was diagnosed with Tay Sachs and they did their family trees - they’re not Jewish BTW. Really unlucky, no one else in either family is affected.

I've been doing my family tree and discovered that my great grandparents were first cousins. It felt a bit weird at first but now I'm OK with it...it is legal and it was different times.

It's legal and no mainstream church has a problem with it. My stepson is married to his first cousin.

It’s not that uncommon. My paternal ancestors include two women with the same full name who married into the family: one was the great-niece of the other & married her second cousin..

if you do it for generations you’re going to end up like the last Hapsburg kings, but most of us have ancestors who were quite closely related, because after enough generations with not much mobility, everyone is. It can multiply risks, but not by much.

Just encourage the kids to meet lots of unrelated people!

Da fuck is right!

I can't imagine marrying my only cousin. He's got a face like a burst boot for a start and the personality of a garden chair.

🤣

😂 😂 😂

Its yuck but its done and dusted now.

My parents were first cousins. They got married in the 70s. Yes, they knew they were related when they started dating. No one else in the family was particularly bothered apart from thinking that my dad was a waste of space (accurate in hindsight!) Me and my siblings are all healthy, intelligent, rarely get sick and have no underlying genetic conditions.

I understand where you’re coming from on the health concerns issue but unless your willing to fork out for extensive genetic testing there’s nothing you can do about it. Btw this is still happening in 2022 amongst the Asian community

I get the ick OP.
Whilst it might not be illegal, its morally wrong. I don't get how they say its not a direct blood line when the parents of each person involved share the blood line.
Also I find it really ick when the cousins grew up close together, hen decide to embark on a relationship together. I could understand better if they didn't know each other, or grew up away from each other and then met, but then once they knew they should stay away from each other.

In your case OP its something that happened years ago and there's nothing you can do about it now, but it's like anything once you know it, you can't unknow it and can't help having an opinion.

first cousin marriage is said to double the risk of certain birth defects, but only to a level that's still fairly low

one first cousin intermarriage three generations back is neither here nor there.

Perhaps one was adopted?

I’m shocked at how blasé most posters are about the incest taboo. And one poster is wrong- many religions DO forbid close marriage. E.g. Greek Orthodoxy forbids closer than seven steps. Even in small isolated villages with little choice. There is ample medical evidence showing the risks of cousin marriage- look at haemophilia among European royals! But still many cultures prize father’s brother’s daughter marriage (from pov of a male). However, there is a high rate of birth defects in these societies. Don’t most western societies ban first cousin marriage today?

It is still legal in the UK.
www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/6923420/can-marry-cousin-uk-higher-chance-birth-defects-children/

I knew cousins who married in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Both their DC did have problems with their ears which may well have been hereditary. Nothing horrendous though. Aunt and uncle then became MIL and FIL respectively. Lots of people knew they were cousins and nobody thought anything of it.

I’m shocked at how blasé most posters are about the incest taboo

It's legal here. So not categorised as incest

If there is repeated first-cousin marriage throughout generations in your ancestry, as in some royal families, then yes, your risk of genetic problems is significantly increased. One first-cousin marriage however does not present a statistically significant risk.

First-cousin marriage is legal in the UK, Canada, Australia, many US states, most European countries, and as far as I am aware, the entire South American continent.

Interestingly it seems countries which have statutory bans on cousin marriage are very much in the minority: i.redd.it/xhcyq1v36bo71.png

Presumably it's not considered a big enough problem to legislate against in that it doesn't happen often and when it does, it usually doesn't cause many issues. So perhaps the agency of the individuals involved is considered more important?

Sibling or immediate ancestor / descendant marriage is different, I would guess, because of the higher risk of harm to any resulting issue and because of the higher risk of abuse in these kinds of relationships.

Not an issue, and never would be, unless there was a LOT of it going on for several generations. In many places, this is not only accepted, it is practically the norm. It can be a problem in small, isolated villages with tiny populations, but in your case, nothing to even give a second thought to.

A couple of people have mentioned the cases of hæmophilia in Victoria's descendants. This was not caused by cousins marrying. Hæmophilia is caused by an X-linked recessive gene so if a boy inherits it from his mother he'll have the disease but girls need two copies to be ill but can be carriers if they inherit one copy, boys can't inherit it from their fathers. There was no hæmophilia earlier in her bloodline (and Albert wasn't a hæmophiliac) so the most likely explanation is that it was caused by a spontaneous mutation. Victoria had one son with hæmophilia, and two daughters who we know were carriers who had sons and grandsons who had hæmophilia. There hasn't been a case in the Royal families of Europe for over a hundred years.

I would think of it like this: if they hadn’t married, the man you love wouldn’t exist. Neither would the children you love. How can something be wrong if it created something you love more than anything? Personally I don’t think it’s ick at all.