Incest: How close is too close?

In My Humble Opinion
21

This is a really interesting question–I never thought about how what you think is ok depends so much on regional culture and an individual family’s dynamics, even within typical modern American culture, let alone other cultures in the past or around the world.

Incest produces such a visceral “ick” factor for me that I never really thought about what someone who had been raised far away from their 2nd cousins would think. Personally, I come from an area that’s actually pretty stereotypical for icky-incest-stories (half my childhood in eastern Kentucky) and I think that the fact that the region has that stereotype caused a bit of a backlash. It’s an area that’s got a very small population that’s been sitting there for hundreds of years with very little change, and it’s got a reputation (sometimes deserved) as being backwards and dirty, and I think recent generations have been gradually changing their standards based on that. As far as I know, there are people still marrying first cousins, and there’s this family story about one of my grandfather’s crazy cousins who married one first cousin, then divorced him and married another one. People who marry 1st, 2nd, or 3rd cousins are looked down on.

There’s also the fact that everyone knows everyone, and being raised playing with 1st and 2nd cousins is the norm. Even more extended family tend to come back fairly regularly to visit, and families stay close-knit. So you think of your 3rd cousin John as family, and not this new guy you just met. The visceral reaction for me has become: If your mutual ancestor can be easily traced through living memory, eww. With such a close knit community, it’s pretty easy to get to talking to Grandma and her friends and realize that cute boy in your English class is really your 4th cousin through some crazy relative. Puts a damper on things. I joke I had to move to out of the state to find someone it didn’t creep me out to date.

As far as my relationships, even if it’s really distant, knowing how someone is related just kills any romantic thoughts, for me. And of course, we’re all related somehow, so I guess being able to actually trace the path, and people remembering who the mutual ancestor was is what gets me. It’s kinda silly and arbitrary, I know.

So of course things like parent/child, grandparent/grandchild, aunt/nephew would be too close for me. I also do have to admit I’d probably be a little grossed out if I found out that a couple I knew were 1st or 2nd cousins. I wouldn’t say anything to them, of course, and I’d try to think about it rationally, knowing that there’s really no reason for it, but the first gut reaction is a prejudice I’d have to work past.

22

I find up to and including 2nd cousins to be oogy, but, then again, I have ZERO 1st cousins so perhaps I am feeling the effect that most people feel for 1st cousins.

I think about this more often than some, because I get the feeling that three female 2nd cousins from one branch of my family are going to grow up to be smoking hot and also awesome people. Oh, and no, I dont fantasize sexually about them now :eek:

23

So then, masturbation is right out?

-FrL-

24

I’ll say it.

I get a bit of “ick” when the two are in a direct descent relation (ie parent/child, grandparent/grandchild, and so on) but other than that there is no “ick” factor for me. Don’t know why this should be.

Brother/sister? Seems more awkward than icky to me.

For the record, I’ve certainly never been attracted to anyone I knew to be related to me.

-FrL-

25

I disagree that first-cousin marriage doesn’t pose much of a risk, because while it boosts the incidence of birth defects by “only” 3-4% for the first generation (p.2, top paragraph in second column), the main problem is that in cultures where it’s permitted at all, it may be the default marriage option for many or most people. In-line unions are like the potato chips of genealogy; most family trees which indulge in this at all can’t limit themselves to just one. The danger is greatly multiplied in tribal or clannish cultures that practice polygamy, in which a single man may easily father over thirty children. Compound a basic 3% marginal risk through, say, ten or twenty (or fifty) generations and you’re talking about some major problems. As one medical study summarized:

“Parental consanguinity is known to increase the risk of autosomal recessive conditions through the expression of recessive deleterious alleles, especially in the offspring of first-degree cousins. It is a recognized risk factor for several pediatric disorders including stillbirths and perinatal mortality (6, 7), congenital birth defects, malformations, and mental retardation (8–11). In addition, consanguinity has been associated with congenital heart disease (12), blood diseases (hemophilia, ß-thalassemia) (13), deafness, cystic fibrosis (14), chronic renal failure (15), and neonatal diabetes mellitus (16).”

Consider Saudi Arabia, where polygamy is tolerated and most marriages are consanguineous (between first cousins being the most common type). Here specifically, consanguineous unions have been linked in medical studies to an overall rate of 81.3 birth defects out of every 1000 live births, and elevated incidence rates of thalassemia, “Indian” sickle cell anemia, and spina bifida, to name a few defects and disorders, many of them rare. By contrast, the world’s lowest birth defect rate is enjoyed by France, with an overall rate of 39 per thousand.

The cost of treating congenital defects and disorders has become such a problem in S.A. that the government instituted mandatory pre-marital blood testing for thalassemia and sickle-cell in 2004, with these early results from that year:

“The Ministry of Health has revealed that 8,903 new cases of hereditary blood diseases were diagnosed as a result of implementing the mandatory pre-marital blood test. Dr. Mansoor Al-Hawasi, deputy director of executive affairs at the Ministry of Health, said that the ministry’s laboratory conducted 125,559 tests in 34 centers around Saudi Arabia during the first five months of mandatory pre-marital blood tests imposed at the beginning of this year. The results of the tests showed 5,324 cases of sickle cell anemia and 3,579 cases of thalassemia. Saudi Arabia has one of the highest percentages in the world of people who are either carriers of sickle cell trait or with sickle cell disease.”

But cultural/religious traditions are hard to break. Even when presented with adverse results from such tests, many are still counseled (by religious leaders and not their doctors) to have faith in their Halal (albeit consanguineous) marriage.

26

There was a study that got a lot of press a few years ago about this. If you stick to the headlines and such, it was touted as indicating a small increased risk. But if you looked at the actual numbers…

It’s one of those absolute vs. relative risk issues. The absolute increase seemed like a small number. The relative risk was a doubling of the chance of birth defects. That makes it a “no way would that be considered acceptable” thing to me.

And that’s just a “one off” scenario. Throw in cousin marriages over several generations and you have the Ptolemies.

(On preview: The Scrivener links to a paper which cites such a study.)

27

Most of the additional risk seems to come into play for those “reinforced” first cousins, who share a lot of common ancestry over the previous few hundred years. They’re first cousins, but they’re also 3rd cousins, and 5 cousins once removed on 3 other lines, etc.

However, in those societies where 1st cousins usually marry, that sort of extra reinforcement tends to be the norm.

I myself have a pair of ancestors who married despite the fact they were 1st cousins on one side and 2nd cousins on the other side of the family.

So: First cousins who want to wed and reproduce should compared genealogies and possible consult with a geneticist to see if their risk is significantly elevated. :smiley:

28

I found out a few years ago that my stepsister had a bit of a “thing” for me. I lived with my mum and stepfather as a kid, and he had access rights to my stepsister, who would stay with us two nights a week - just enough ‘eww’ factor at having not exactly but almost grown up together. I disliked her as a child (I was 12-ish and she was a precocious six year-old), but later we got on well, and this is when my step-brother told me that she fancied me.

I promptly proceeded to do nothing about it. I seldom see her now, but I assume at age 30-something, she too has realised it would have been A. Very. Bad. Idea.

29

I don’t think I’d be able to marry my stepdad, but I’d totally have sex with him. But as a general rule, I think that any blood relative up to a cousin isn’t appropriate. 2nd cousin is so far away that I don’t think it counts.

30

A friend of mine once unexpectedly encountered her new boyfriend at a family reunion. Yes, they were distantly related. I believe they shared a great-great grandmother.

And my cousin was soundly renounced by his family for living with his female cousin while they were in college. Turns out, he was gay, which horrified his family even more. He and his cousin were merely sharing an apartment.

31

Nope, simple otherwise unrelated couples. The paper refers to repeated intermarriage, the citation in the paper refers to the one-off case.

32

A few weeks ago I met several of my first cousins for the very first time in my life. A couple of them were above average in looks, intelligence, etc. and (although I’m quite happily married) I could see them as attractive in a completely hypothetical way.

But within oly a few minutes, we were discovering not only common health issues, but common stories about our grandparents, our parents, aunts and uncles, etc. From being total strangers to a full EWWWW factor took no more than 10 minutes.

33

Leviticus allows 1st cousins & step-sibs, NOT step-parents (even ex’s or widowed), not sure about aunts/uncles-by-marriage if ex or widowed.

That’s good enough for me.

34

In general, I guess first cousins and closer are out for me completely, for genetic reasons. Beyond that acceptability is determined by my conception of my relationship with the other person. Consider:

On my Mom’s side of the family, I have about 100 relatives that live within 30 miles of where I currently sit, all of whom I have known since I was a baby (or since the relative was a baby, for the few who are younger than I am) since the big extended family is very close. Many of them are second, third, or higher cousins. There are several who I’m not even related to by blood at all. But the idea of being sexually attracted to any of them is unthinkable to me. They’re my family! It has very little, if anything, to do with lineage and everything to do with culture. It is unthinkable to me to be attracted to “family,” and all of those people are my family, genetics be damned! Even for the ones who aren’t related to me by blood, it’s a total impossibility. My brain simply won’t allow me to accept it as a possibility, which I suppose is Darwinism at work.

Things are different on my Dad’s side of the family. There are 3 people within 800 miles related to me on his side that I know of: my Dad, my sister, and one aunt. And I know that I have a few second or third cousins on the other side of the country whom I have never met. I believe that some of them are the right age and gender for this topic to apply. And I wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand because of incest concerns. The reason for that is that I have no conception of them as “family.” If I hit it off with a girl, and it came out that she was my third cousin from Nevada, I might be a little creeped out. But the fact that we share some DNA would be only an academic fact, albeit one that would be rather embarrassing socially. But if I liked her, I’d be willing to overlook the relation.

The point, I suppose, is that family is defined far more by relationships than heredity. And once you move far enough away on the family tree that genetic factors are mitigated, the technical nature of the familial relationship becomes a secondary concern to the nature of the relationship that has naturally developed over time.

In conclusion, I’d do my (hypothetical!) third cousin from Arizona if she was hot and I hadn’t known her since I was 3 years old.

35

When I was in junior high my mother, a widow, took up with a man, a widower, who had a son my age. When I say “took up with” I mean we all moved in together eventually and people were led to believe there had been a wedding, including the guy I regarded as my stepbrother and I. They even went to Hawaii for their “honeymoon.”

We were both only children, didn’t like being only children, and immediately glommed onto each other as brother and sister.

A couple of years down the road, things didn’t work out between the grownups and they (ahem) “got a divorce” (cough). (Honestly, it was more than ten years later and I was getting married myself when my mother finally admitted they had been living in sin. They had honestly intended to get married but couldn’t work out the financial issues.) But my brother and I, who are not related in any way, still considered ourselves as siblings and the idea of dating him–ugh. No way! Even though I always thought of him as a cute guy, and my type.

A couple of years ago I finally met my real, genuine, genetic brother (I was adopted), along with a half-brother and half-sister. I could actually more easily see myself getting romantic over my brother & half brother rather than my not-really stepbrother. (I wouldn’t, of course, even if all of us weren’t already spoken for, which we are. Married 100 years between the four of us.)

36

For me it breaks down into two completely separate categories: fooling around on the one hand and having babies on the other.

I’ve had a wonderful, as circumstances permit, decades-long involvement with a first cousin. The idea of bearing children together has never been on the table.

We’ve kept it more or less under our hats, since we understand exactly what this thread bears out: some folks can’t get their minds around it, some can. But for us, intimacy and having a lot in common aren’t necessarily incompatible.

I recommend the opening chapters of the book “Middlesex” for an interesting treatment of sibling mating.

37

Sounds like the Westermarck effect, and it’s mirror-universe counterpart genetic sexual attraction to me.

As for my own views on the subject—well, you know old fascist libertarian me, anything between consenting (and at least passably sane) adults is fine by me. I just think the evidence suggests not making it a more-than occasional occurance per generation, though.

Be as freaky as you want, as long as you’re not hurting anyone, and you’re not making me foot the bill.

38

Parents, siblings, grand-parents are off limits. Cousins would in my opinion depend mostly on whether you’ve grown up together. I know my first cousins very well from spending lots of time together as children and the idea of something with them repulses me, however, I think it would be very different if you hardly have any contact or knowledge of them beforehand. Same thing goes for second or third cousins, some of them are close family, others I don’t even know their names.

There’s been lots of discussion over first cousin marriages over here because that’s a lot more common among Pakistani immigrants than in the native population and some believe it should be forbidden in order to prevent forced marriages. However, they completely ignore the fact that our current king is the result of a first cousin marriage and the royal families of Europe in general would look very different without it. (Probably in a good way, but regardless)

39

One of the southern states (sorry I couldn’t find the cite- Kentucky? Tennessee?) allows “regular” first-cousin marriage but specifically prohibits marriage between “double cousins” (the offspring of two siblings who married two siblings).

40

Siblings? No problem (although I don’t think breeding is a good idea) Really the only one I have any issues with is parent/child, grandparent/grandchild. And if both of them are consenting adults I really ought to get over that as well