To be disturbed by wilfull ignorance around genetic inbreeding?

[M9009]

I've come from a country were cousin marriage and indeed marriage to any close relative if illegal.
I've recently started working in a dialysis unit and I'm so disturbed by how many parents are young children born of first cousin marriage. Usually from South Asian backgrounds.
Today I was speaking to one parents who has 9 children, all in need of kidney transplants. The eldest 2 have already had theirs. Parents are first degree cousins and each have various medical problems of their own.
Why, as a society, do we allow these marriages? It seems so cruel to the children who are born with medical and genetic problems.
Maybe I'm easily shocked, I don't know.

I wonder whether families that attend medical appointments for children likely impacted by this are informed on the genetic elements of it? I wonder whether consultants are allowed or encouraged to discuss this part.

Is there hope it will gradually phase out, then?

This definitely

White Irish Traveller babies are probably affected a lot too...

There are good reasons why it's taboo in many cultures! Make all the excuses you want, but it's clearly not an ideal thing to do, genetically. (And yes, I do know a couple, and yes, both their kids have significant issues).
Even chimps have the good sense to actively avoid it! (most females disperse from the group they are born into).

'Do you think people have to be legally married to have children?'

But the demographic who tend to have intimate relationships with their first cousins would be getting married and having children. So yes making it illegal in the UK would make a difference.

A cousin marriage as a one off is not a huge risk unless both sets of parents are related, the problems tend to arise when there are multiple marriages over generations within in a close knit community, this means that only may the couple be first cousins but their parents could be closely related as well which obviously increases the risk of inherited conditions due to recessive genes

I don't beleive any sane person would think it is acceptable but our weak politicians are too afraid to ban first cousin marriage in case they are called racist.

its not something that would be banned in the uk due to the class structure and the way they keep the money in their family over the generations.

it’s also not just a first cousin issue but people in small areas, villages in the past all marrying one another for generations. I have this in my family tree. In particular I have ancestors living in a very small community for over 500 years, so far it’s got so complicated that I’m at the stage of thinking everyone on the census for the community are related to me somehow. I have a group of them relocating to America for example, so you would think finally that would stop. But no when their wives are dying a sister of their first wife or a cousin is getting shipped out to be the next wife.

It’s even quite recent. I knew nothing about any of this, I didn’t even know anything about my great grandma but I now know my great grandmother and all of her siblings, bar one, died tragically very young between their 30s and 40s, this was only in the 1940s and 1950s. Three sisters all died within one year of each other and were all treated in hospitals for their conditions. I was really unsure what was going on and then I did a proper in depth search of their parents and realised they were first cousins. So my poor grandfather and siblings lost their mother as young children as did all of his cousins. So very sad.

I then, other side of the family, have first cousins (even have same surname) marrying in the 1960s. They were a childless couple, I assume not by choice but better than poor children being born with terrible illnesses. Oh and I’m from very very poor working class white background.

I think the risks start multiplying if say your siblings also married a first cousin and then one of your children and one of theirs then married and so on and so on.

How upsetting for you. I'm so sorry.

Your small village is, fortunately, now a rare outlier. For the vast majority of the UK - including the wealthy so-called 'upper' classes - choosing to marry your cousin is viewed as incestuous and regressive. Plus we are all so much more mobile. Our potential dating pools are large and wide and as our children grow up they move to new towns and cities to study and work.

Even the European royal families stopped marrying their cousins many generations ago.

We can and should ban cousin marriages, and at the same time require all religious marriages to be legal ones. The communities where cousin marriages are common are also the ones where having child outside of marriage is rare and strongly disapproved of. It would be very effective.

It just needs political courage and will. I very much hope Starmer finds and inserts a backbone and gets on with it. It could be the one action he is most proud of from his premiership. Imagine - thousands of children born free of terrible disabilities because of your leadership.

I have relatives from Africa where this happens but is not common.
It's not that first cousins marriages immediately cause issues.
So for example, say your parents and grandparents are not related at all but you married a first cousin, that's not considered an issue.
It's when you marry a first cousin, your parents are cousins and your grandparents are cousins etc
And there are any diseases in the family, that's when it's much more likely that your kids will get genetic disorders.

Women having affairs was still frowned on though, especially if it resulted in children. Edwina Mountbatten, for one, had heaps of affairs during the years she had kids but her 2 daughters resemble Mountbatten, so I suoppse she used contraception somehow (easier for a wealthy woman)

The thing is that there are so many angles to this argument which are getting conflated and confused, I will state that I do not agree with first cousin intergenerational marriage. Putting side the political and cultural aspects, even societal morals.

Intergenerational means that first cousins are marrying first cousins from their own aunty and uncle etc. and they have also done so previously.

Genetical evidence as is scientifically proven intergenerational marriages of first cousins will have a very high likelihood of, disability, early death, suffering. Long term side affects on often large families.

You wouldn’t think that if you read Wuthering Heights! I wonder how Cathy and Hareton’s kids turned out? 🫤

I'm not sure aristos do tend to marry first cousins now? There is a bit more variation. I mean, even the royal family has Prince William married to a woman who ran in aristocratic circles but isn't an aristo (aside from some connection to the Lupton family, but this is not direct)

🤦‍♀️How could I forget? I did that for A Level. Definitely a good example of why you shouldn't marry a cousin!

So much suffering until then though..

Also, Jane Eyre and St.John? I always assumed that it was very common.

This documentary is interesting on that...

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/may/27/ellie-simmonds-should-i-have-children-review-fails-to-properly-tackle-the-stigma-around-disabled-babies

What a silly comment. There's been loads of threads about this on here when the bill was being discussed, none were shut down.

Good idea

How are they allowed legally to withdraw from school?

Are you referring to cousin marriage affecting IQ? It's a hard topic but sadly mufht be part of the reason some people are so intransigent about it if they come from communities which practise it (as in the documentary I linked to)

That's so awful... 😢

Pitcairn Island was a whole other level...child abuse was normalised there.