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 love A Suitable Boy - good parallel, I think Vikram Seth has said he's a Jane Austen fan.

This is a good point...

Agree

Ashkhenazi Jews, esp the strictest Haredi Jews who marry only in-community are more prone to things like Tay-Sachs. Jewish law did traditionally promote cousin marriage and even uncle-niece marriage but this was phased out long ago, and other religions must do the same. Testing works but people generally aren't marrying first cousins in the first place

This is destroying our NHS as these people are taking a disproportionate share of resources and it is getting worse and worse. This links with the hideous abuse of women and girls in these communities where young girls are ‘married off’ within families at revoltingly young ages.

In the first part of the book it is argued that Fanny can't marry a cousin because they're being raised 'always together, like brothers and sisters'. But that's because of her being raised in the family, not simply due to them being first cousins

That is really odd...

And withdrew it, saying it should never have been published.

Yep, Edmund doesn't groom her, but he's 16 and meets her when she's 10. Emma is worse since Emma has known Mr Knightley since she's a baby, and he tells her at the end that he was in love with her 'ever since you were 13 at least'. 🤢
Or look at Dickens novels like Bleak House where it's seen as fine for Esther to potentially marry her guardian when she comes of age!

So many examples of 19th century novels aren't good guides for now!

My question too!

Mr Collins is I think a more distant cousin than a first cousin, but still a relative..

Agree with this...

Yes, poor Charles V's jaw hurt him when he ate, made his speech indistinct & he was cruelly mocked

https://ru.pinterest.com/pin/flemish-school-c-1515-c-151416-emperor-charles-v-150058-charles-was-born-with-the-socalled-hapsburg-chin-which-is-a-deformity--434738170256387274/

Yes...

Putting aside genetic issues, cousin marriage has huge social issues too. With the grooming gangs, the girls were brought to family homes. The women would have known what was happening and remained silent. Thousands of them. This silence is more understandable when you realise that the women in these houses had to contend with their husband’s families being their blood family too. To turn in your husband, you would be nuking your family and would have your grandparents, parent and aunts and uncles fall on you like a ton of bricks. You couldn’t turn in your husband and cut off his family because it’s your blood family too.

Exactly. There is also evidence some Muslim girls were groomed in-community too. Hugely closed-in and tight-knit religious communities often enable abuse...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.mwnuk.co.uk/go_files/resources/UnheardVoices.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiOn8is4KqSAxU3YEEAHXUXEZgQFnoECCcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3Hw9uNMmyuZFBMiOsoOyfh

Traveller peer led health projects have been working in this area in Ireland for at least 20 years (I remember hearing about this as a young person) and cousin marriage is becoming less common. An issue is that the Irish Travelling community is so small that if you wish to marry within your community there is a higher chance of genetic diseases.
It's also becoming more common to marry outside the community, which was absolutely unheard of when I was young.

My DC’s cousins (dad’s side) are children of first cousins. Thankfully they are healthy, but obviously only by luck. I cannot imagine my eldest son, and my niece ever thinking of each other in a romantic sense as they are a year apart and grew up together. I’d be extremely shocked (not least as my DS is gay!) if they announced they were a couple and i’d advise them to have genetic testing before having children.

DC’s cousins parents have been happily married for 30yrs and I was not aware for many years they were first cousins, probably as i’d made a comment about someone I worked with being married to a first cousin and how odd it was to me, so ex DP didn’t tell me. In fact he never has, I found out from conversations with ex SIL. It was their parents who drove the relationship as ex SIL was only 16 when she was brought to the UK (from South East Asia). Maybe the idea was to give her a better life and that was the way.

As I say, they are very happy, but there have been explosive family arguments over that 30yrs. Mostly driven by ex MIL’s horrible treatment of her DIL / niece (you’d all be open mouthed at the MIL stories I have, certainly not petty), so that’s definitely one down side of marrying in the family, big drama. They are a lovely family and genuinely the kindest people I know, even 15yrs after ex and I split, they still invite me over and are so hospitable and if I was ever in trouble, they’d be the first people to come. Genuinely lovely people.

Overall, I feel it should not be allowed when we have the medical evidence of how damaging it can be. I know in some UK areas there’s been a lot of education re genetic testing which does help a little. I’d imagine it’s rare outside of South East Asian culture and hope it dies out given the education young people have around it now in the UK.

Most of the Muslim girls I grew up with had zero desire to marry their cousins so I think in a few generations it will sort itself out anyway. My only concern is people performing a nikkah without a civil marriage which is not great for women if it were banned. Is it Denmark who banned cousin marriage because they think it will reduce clan based criminality? I definitely struggle to not see this is stomach churning (not muslim, absolutely banned in my religion) but so did many of my muslim friends. I don’t think there are loads of young men and women who are really super keen.

I’m asian and grew up in a very asian place, some families would have agreed marriages so cousins would be able to migrate to the UK. It often meant british muslims were stuck with spouses that grew up in very different environments with very different cultures and expectations. The changes to overseas spouses rules definitely meant a few men and women breathed a sigh of relief.

This is going to be controversial but here goes, communities where there are high pairings of british raised plus foreign spouses who are related to them will struggle to move forward culturally on womens rights etc. You just have waves of more conservative people embedding conservative views in the new families they create. The grooming gangs scandal really highlighted how these networks of cousins functioned, high loyalty to the clan, low empathy for anyone outside the clan. They abused as families. You saw this in the level of abuse coming from women in these families directed at the victims instead of shame and embarrassment (not saying women are responsible for mens actions but damn right I’d be fucking ashamed if a man in my family did those things) which would be more the norm.

Reducing chain migration is one way to shift the dial on that and I actually think it’s one of the reasons the rules were brought in the first place. I don’t think most british born asians want a foreign spouses unless they are someone they fell in love with themselves anyway. For most women anyway it’s not appealing, for some men it may be because they believe they will have more control of their wives.

Maybe this is a discussion we need to have.

Queen Victoria married her first cousin- was not seen as a problematic issue.

My ex MIL who is Arab said inbreeding amongst cousins is a good thing because it makes the blood stronger. 😂

I think they should be warned when marrying a cousin that any offspring with genetic birth defects/disorders will not be treated on the NHS and they must pay privately. When I lived in the Gulf, you had to pay to get a blood test before marriage to check for any genetic disorders. They should be made to do the same at their own expense.

If you harmed your baby in the womb with alcohol or drugs, surely the social would get involved. Why isn’t it the same for inbreeding and causing genetic disorders?

Such wreckless behaviour and all stems down to greed. They want to keep the land and money within the family name. Poor children.

My DH is from a South Asian family. His parents are absolutely against this even though it is "permitted" in their culture and to my knowledge his wider family too.

They are not all like this.

I read that article too