Cousin marriage

In NZ you can marry your cousins, as you can in the UK. The Marriage Act 1955 prohibits you marrying your:

• parent (doh!) or grandparent, child or grandchild
• sibling
• parent’s sibling (aunt, uncle) or sibling’s child (nephew, niece)
• current or former spouses or partners of parents, grandparents, children or grandchildren

In the UK there has been a call to ban cousin marriage. Matt Goodwin writes:

When Keir Starmer was recently asked in Parliament whether he would allow legislation banning cousin marriage to proceed, he declined to give support.

Consistently, Labour has pushed against a private member’s bill introduced by the Conservative Party MP Richard Holden to ban the practice.

This is not an accident; it is a very deliberate choice.

For most of British history, cousin marriage was restricted or discouraged. It became taboo as family sizes shrank, knowledge of the genetic risks that accompany incest grew, and Britain evolved into a modern, open, civilised society.

There is a difference between discourage and ban.

For instance, one recent study, the Born in Bradford project, found that nearly half of all mothers from the Pakistani community in three inner-city wards —46%—were married to their first or second cousin, compared to 1% among White British couples.

Defenders of the practice will say the health risks are often exaggerated.

My grandmother’s parents were first cousins. She lived to 95.

But as Times columnist Matthew Syed has repeatedly noted, the real danger lies not only in isolated cousin marriages, but in repeating the practice across generations — cousins marrying cousins whose parents were also themselves cousins. 

In such cases, the risks compound dramatically. 

This explains why small communities, mainly of Pakistani origin, account for a vastly disproportionate share of recessive genetic disorders, and why parts of the NHS now employ specialist staff to manage the consequences.

As the courageous academic Patrick Nash summarised in a recent paper, children of cousin-marriage are about twice as likely to inherit a serious genetic disorder (which rises significantly in communities with multi-generational cousin-parents), and are far more likely to suffer from cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, various cancers, birth defects, cardiovascular conditions, mood disorders, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, higher infant mortality rates, and depressed I.Q. scores. 

“In short”, notes Nash, “the adverse biological consequences of cousin marriage are legion, severe, and long-lasting”.

This makes a stronger case, but I am still not convinced. First of all marriage and sex are not the same thing. People can have sex and children without being married. If this is an issue, then it is the incest law you should change, not just the marriage law.

But also you need to be careful about restricting individual choice on the basis of healthcare costs. Would you ban downs syndrome adults from having sex? Would you ban people with Huntingdon’s Disease from breeding? It is a slippery slope.

Education on the health risks of breeding with your cousin is preferable to a ban.

Nearly 80 per cent of the British public, according to recent polling by YouGov, say they support a ban on cousin marriage.

Many people support bans that won’t affect them.

The post Cousin marriage first appeared on Kiwiblog.