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.

Three, seriously? I feel I’ve been living under a rock, I had no idea this happened.

I can understand though that if you didn’t grow up knowing your cousin you might not feel the same revulsion to the idea that you would if you grew up with them being close family.

The NHS does not believe it's a great thing. That is wilful misunderstanding.

If we want to reduce something, we can't just go "Ew". Clearly the communities involved feel that there are benefits to the practice and we need to understand what they are. One of those benefits - whether we like it or not - is that family bonds are strong and the extended family feels responsible for its members.

I have a friend who is married to her first cousin. She shrugs and says that she can't see a problem with it. She doesn't feel any Ew and entered into the marriage willingly. If we want people like her to reject centuries of practice in finding your marriage partner within your family, we can't just shudder; we need to understand why people keep doing it.

'Tis legal in Bodmin... 😁

Who? You can’t say something like that and then leave us hanging.

rape?

What I mean is that any new laws need to be consistent and non-discriminatory. So if the government passes a new law that bans cousins from marrying because their children are more likely to have disabilities, then it would be inconsistent not to ban people with genetic disabilities from having children, who are also much more likely to be disabled. (This is a bit of a simplification but if we have any human rights lawyers on this thread they can go into more detail!)

Also of course the problem is not cousins marrying per se... it's cousins having kids together. In practice because the South Asian community has a high rate of marriage and a low rate of having kids together without marriage there is a lot of crossover, but they are two different things.

I had no idea it wasn't illegal. It absolutely should be. Allowing people to breed and have offspring with a moderate chance of significant deformities is ethically and financially wrong. I mean - 9 children needing kidney transplants on the NHS. The cost will be millions of pounds over their lifetime. The mind boggles.

I'd also disagree that in the past it was common to marry your cousin. It most definitely was not. Even in the aristocracy.

The Tories must be fine with it too as they never banned it during their 15 years in power.

It’s probably relatively common to have a teen crush on a cousin. People are often drawn to people who look similar to them as romantic partners.

Indeed.

If there is cystic fibrosis in your family ... or inheritable deafness ... or spinal muscular atrophy ... or diabetes ...

In every single families case?

But if so that needs different protection and support.

I see what you’re saying but don’t think the two need to be conflated. A law saying “marrying your cousin is illegal” would be just that.

I don’t think everyone would be saying “but that’s not fair, you have to ban disabled people from marrying too!

I don't know, it was before dh was born (so you are right on not in my lifetime, but they are only 1 generation older). And thinking about it they didn't have kids, I don't know if that is coincidence or not. But he didn't get the impression it was a scandal or led to family fall out.
The fact that it was legal and plenty of other people on this thread have also mentioned they knew people makes me think it wasn't that rare not that long ago, particularly in rural communities. And any closer marriage, eg uncle and niece / siblings is illegal so at some point law makers in UK have decided that was where they were happy to draw the line, it hasn't just happened by default.

I had a brief crush on a cousin in my mid teens - BUT we hadn't been brought up together, or even knew we existed. His father had been adopted out, and only found my dad once his adopted parents died. Weirdly, they only lived about 15 miles away from us....
Anyway, the crush passed, and I think it's valid to say that cousins brought up knowing each other are way less likely to have an attraction to each other. It's that kind of extended sibling thing.

Because it’s “racist” - and we can’t have that.

The NHS have been actively trying to promote cousin marriage recently so keen are they to be “inclusive”- it’s mad.

There are 7 billion people in the world, why would anyone need or want to marry or have sex with their cousins!?

I agree. It's a taboo topic and needs talking about. But those who have tried get accused of rasism.

I see it a lot in my line of work too. lots of disability involved too.

It seems totally unnecessary and without any merit in modern society.

I think second cousin or further away related than that should be legal but not first or closer. There's too much of a risk. Especially when it's just generation after generation of them. Though sadly obviously some are too profoundly disabled they'd never be able to have children, or live independent lives.

I read something like 55% of UK based Pakistanis were married to a first cousin. That is a very severe issue and it needs to be dealt with from inside that community.

Laws etc are all well and good but if attitudes don't change it will just be pushed underground. Putting vulnerable women and children at even more risk.

I think first-cousin marriage happened in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. It was strongly suggested and even advocated within the book but didn't in the end happen, in Pride and Prejudice and in Persuasion.

Jane's brother Harry married their first cousin.

Needs a lot of education amongst the South Asian communities. Some of the women are so totally dominated by their husbands and the cultural expectations of their families that it will be impossible to get them onboard.

It was illegal in England for 1,000 years without a papal dispensation. In fact, Catholic canon law still prohibits marriage to six degrees of consanguinity. That’s: siblings; uncle-niece / aunt/nephew; first cousins; first cousins once removed; second cousins. This ceased to be enforced after the Reformation, but the practice of cousin had been eradicated so long ago that it was considered socially unacceptable. In the 19th century there was a short-lived fashion for cousin marriage among a small number of upper middle class industrialists and land owners. These were not arranged marriages. It was more a matter of mixing in tight-knit circles. Charles Darwin married his cousin and blamed it for the death of one of his children. However, one generation of cousin marriage has a relatively low risk. It is successive generations that becomes so dangerous.

I learned this was an issue in the UK with some immigrant populations when I studied genetics 20 years ago, it's not new at all.

Some parts of the Jewish community in the UK have elements of this, although it's more a small population marrying than cousin marriage, as far as I'm aware. There's been an issue with Tay Sachs which is an awful disease that kills children before age 5. As a result, those parts of the community have genetic testing before marriage to confirm they are not both carriers.

While one union of cousins isn't an issue and it's generations that are the problem, I person do not think it should be legal.

I'd be really interested to hear from anyone with personal experience or who is from affected communities, if there's anyone reading.