Midwives have been told about the benefits of “close relative marriage” in training documents that minimise the risks to couples’ children.
The documents claim “85 to 90 per cent of cousin couples do not have affected children” and warn staff that “close relative marriage is often stigmatised in England”, adding claims that “the associated genetic risks have been exaggerated”.
Only?
Yeah no shit. 15% is fucking huge
What is the rate among the control group?
I wonder where this 15% figure comes from. All the research I can find estimates the probability for these disorders at around 2-4% for first degree cousins. This is about the same as becoming a mother at 40 with a non-related man.
The article only talks about some NHS training documents and is very opinionated in style. Smells like a snappy headline about a controversial topic was more important than proper research.
Yep, this is rage-bait or some sexual kink thing surfacing as a news story because the authors know it will get shared to hell and back. While I have absolutely no doubt that there are plenty of right-wingers with weird sexual hangups that they’re trying to make everyone’s problem, cousin-marriages are pretty low on the list of things we need to worry about. As long as everyone is adult and consenting I literally do not care what people do with their peepees.
Plus in the absence of any power dynamic* why shouldn’t absolutely anyone be allowed to choose to be in a relationship with literally anyone else? Especially as people are increasingly choosing to not reproduce.
* If this is even possible
Usually the argument goes into the ethics of bearing children in a way that, knowingly, creates a significantly and markedly higher risk for every kind of disorder reducing the child’s QOL. I don’t usually find this argument anywhere near airtight, since there’s a plethora of other ways to do that that aren’t banned AND this veers into eugenics territory. But that’s the argument I’ve seen, at least.
This is maybe an unpopular opinion but I remain on team “stay the fuck out of other people’s business.” This fits soundly in the “other people’s business” category.
Cousin marriage is a heavily exaggerated statistic. Unless it happens many generations in a row the genetic variation does not nearly reach anything representing sibling marriage.
If we ever get Medicare for All, I hope our national insurance agency doesn’t put out a paper extolling the virtues of fucking and impregnanting your cousins.
Er, we do. It’s called the NHS.
It looks as though the goal was to encourage midwives not to stigmatise people for marrying their first cousins. That seems a good policy when they’re delivering healthcare services. But the way the numbers were presented made things appear worse than they are.
I indulge in some risky behaviors (martial arts, skiing, cycling). I don’t want lectures about the risks of those, either. If I break a bone, I want it treated, and if the NHS takes a view on the activity that caused it, I’ll want to hear it later from my GP, and definitely not at the time I’m seeking treatment.
Did you read the article?
‘Benefits of cousin marriages’
The NHS guidance, meanwhile, goes on to describe the benefits of cousin marriages.
The papers explain how “marriage within the family can provide financial and social security at the individual, family and wider kinship levels”.
If that’s not extolling the virtues of impregnanting your cousins, I don’t know what it is.
I think this might be relevant
Wow 10 of them are almost half (or more). That surprises me. I knew it happens in arranged marriages, but I didn’t think it was this frequent.
For convenience, here’s the link that’s written in the footer on the picture:
https://brilliantmaps.com/consanguineous-marriage/
And the source link from there:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/inbreeding-by-country61% !
What is the Roll Tide equivalent in Pakistan?
I won’t live in a town that robs men of the right to marry their cousins!
On the scale of things, I think this rate’s a “who the fuck cares?”.
I don’t really care if cousins get married. I don’t really care if they have kids together. I do care if they have birth defects and we should do things medically responsible to reduce or eliminate birth defects, but the whole cousin thing doesn’t really bother me as long as there’s no external pressure (like British royalty or stereotypical Southern Hicks).
Who is really that bent out of shape on this and why should we care?
I think it’s just another dog whistle tbh, like caring about animal welfare when it’s Halal, or worrying about parking when a HMO is opened.
Cousin marriage is a brown person activity, so suddenly pearls are clutched.
As you stated, the worst thing of such marriage is having kids with health problems that can accumulate very fast with each new generation(silent mutations that get only worse and someday pop out with loud bang). This is mostly the only thing that stops such relationships.
Devils advocate: I have a genetic defect that has 50% chance of being passed to my children. It causes bone tumors that range from stetic to life changing.
We only managed to ensure it wasn’t with expensive DNA tests pre - implantation.
Should I be barred from marriage if I can’t pay for that?
It’s not a hypothetical
Do you think it’s (morally) right for you to have kids that you know would have a 50% chance to have bone tumors?
Sex bans are generally not workable. A marriage ban for you would be restrictive. This is very different for cousins, because there’s plenty of non-cousin alternatives for everyone.
The worse question is, is it more morally rightful for me to have children when I can afford the test that ensured he wasn’t affected versus those who can’t afford it? Does wealth and access make me rightful?
I don’t think marriage bans are OK in general. Consenting adults can do whatever they want. Hell, let’s bring polynomy forward too (but I’m not sure how consent would work there). As a matter of fact, I’m not even married so restriction or not didn’t matter
Not sure what marriage has to do with it in either case tbh. The cousinfuckers can have babies without getting married and so can you lol
But I do understand your point. It’s an ethical dilemma and not a simple one. I mean on a policy level. I imagine on a personal level it’s easier to say “the risk is too great, I won’t do it” as opposed to policymakers saying “the risk is too great, you shouldn’t be allowed to have children”
I’m just following that logic, I made a similar comment about marriage =! Children
https://lemmy.world/comment/21642724
For me this is a good thing (remove the restriction). I would love the message to be more of support rather then “well, some will have defects” though
Oh I didn’t disagree with you. I’m just wondering why tf they’re talking about marriage anyway. In this day and age, I think most babies are born out of wedlock.
There’s a law that prevents the marriage from back when marriage==children.
It’s a stupid law, but an even more stupid reason to change it.
In this day and age, I think most babies are born out of wedlock.
Around 40% in the US.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/out-of-wedlock-births-by-country
That’s already a lot but apparently in the UK which the article is about it is now over 50%
There are far fewer practising Christians in the UK. Also there’s no tax incentive favouring marriage, everyone files separately.
An unfortunate aspect of Pakistani culture that has carried over to the UK.
Families would marry within the family to keep their wealth within the family.
Unfortunately after successive generations, this can cause serious problems.
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This is a problem with Pakistani culture in Britain when it comes to marrying family members.
There’s a reason why the hotspot of birth defects for all of Europe is in Bradford, an area of high Pakistani immigration where over 80% of married adult Pakistanis are married to cousins. That is an insane stat.
Brits have been doing this for literal hundreds to thousands of years.
No, some German-descended royals did it for a few hundred. And they are absolutely not representative of the average Briton. Most normal people aren’t continually marrying from the same royal families of other allied nations, like royals used to.
Do you think maps like this are mere coincidence?
I think there is also a small town in Eastern USA that currently has an issue with everyone being too closely related
Thank god no European family of significance has ever done anything like this.
spoiler
Obviously they have, it’s just very few and far between.
It’s a bit silly to bring up royal families and pretend their lifestyles are similar to that of the common man.
Look at this map and tell me the issue is European culture.
404 humor not found
No it isn’t? I’ve tried again and just like before, it loads a page.
Woosh?
Leaving out the chin-cultivators, most of southern Europe was also like that until relatively recently.
Excuse me! Loads of Western European countries allow full incest (e.g. Belgium, France, Spain, etc.) so let’s not pick on us Brits for allowing cousins to fuck.
not making illegal and support from the national health service are vastly different things. 15% is a disastrous rate for public health.
But it’s not a 15% risk. Unrelated couples have a 3% chance of having a child with a birth defect while cousins have a 5% chance of having a child with a birth defect.
The stats I saw show a 2.55% risk across all UK births. So a bit under 3%.
Isn’t the problem being that the probability increases with each subsequent generations? That’s why having a child with a cousin should be discouraged, to prevent the accumulation of bad recessive genes.
If you have one person with recessive genes and one person with dominant genes, then the baby will have the dominant gene. So if the grandparents were cousins both with recessive genes it wouldn’t matter, as far as I know.
theres also dominant alleles that are the disease state, it also gets complicated when theres partial penetrance since its only half an half.
The thing is, with subsequent incestual generations, the likelihood of the recessive gene manifesting increases a lot. So, the problem is not a single generation of incest, it’s the normalisation of incest that might lead to multiple generations doing it.
Oh I see what you’re saying. I did some reading earlier that said that in a lot of places 20% - 40% of all marriages are to first cousins.
Yeah, plenty of places where first cousin marriages are still not uncommon.
US yanks in red states too.
It’s a fun stereotype, but you may find this map interesting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_United_States
“Brits are like US Southerners” is, arguably, a worse insult then calling them incestuous.
For who? The Brits or the southerners? Lol
Whichever has more teeth
Fun fact: Most of the places it’s legal in are blue. Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina are the only red states it’s legal in, out of 17 total states. If we include states where it’s conditionally legal (usually based on age/fertility) it’s Utah out of 7 states.
I’m partially agreeing with you, but just because other countries say it’s OK, it doesn’t mean that we should.
Haven’t looked at the data, but still, 15% risk is high. From a social a health care perspective, this is horrible for those children too.On the other hand, you can have marriage without children and children without marriage.
Unless you start punishing them for having children, it’s naive to ban marriage.
Define “full incest”. Pretty sure siblings are not allowed
Pretty sure they are. Incestuous relationships between consenting adults (with the age varying by location) are permitted, including in the Netherlands, France, Slovenia, and Spain. Why not check before making such a statement?
Not only wrong, but also childish about it. First, this topic is about marriage. They are not taking about letting them be in a relationship, but marriage.
And marriage between siblings is not allowed in several countries you mentioned, which you would know if you checked instead of being “pretty sure”.
Not go be a wrong ass somewhere else.
Oh do fuck off, there’s a good chap.
It’s more about immigrants
I don’t think marriage is the problem. It’s having children
British teeth explained.
Brits actually have among the healthiest teeth in the world. A while ago they were joint first with Germany, but now they’re only joint 7th with Sweden, after the likes of Denmark, Finland, and others upped their game.
The cousin fucking is very much a Pakistani immigrant problem, so not really related to the unfounded American meme about British dental care.
“It’s cultural”
Are we trying to explain the Royal family again…
mcpoyle families
keep it in the family. mcpoyle over a 1000years in the same bloodline.
