is it legal to marry your first cousin uk

The objections are ostensibly based on the risk of genetic problems. A Genetic Report Should Cause A Rethinking Of Incest Laws. Despite being contradicted by other studies like those of George Darwin (himself the result of a cousin marriage) and Alan Huth in England and Robert Newman in New York, the report's conclusions were widely accepted. Another picture emerges from the large literature on congenital heart defects, which are conservatively estimated to have an incidence of 50/1,000 live births. In Pakistan, where there has been cousin marriage for generations and the current rate may exceed 50%, one study estimated infant mortality at 12.7 percent for married double first cousins, 7.9 percent for first cousins, 9.2 percent for first cousins once removed/double second cousins, 6.9 percent for second cousins, and 5.1 percent among nonconsanguineous progeny. Marrying a first cousin is still legal throughout Europe; in fact, the only prohibitions against it are in some of the United States. Next is marriage within the surra. [235], Comprehensive genetic education and premarital genetic counseling programs can help to lessen the burden of genetic diseases in endogamous communities. Which countries do not allow cousins to marry? California. [152] Pre-2000 Madhya Pradesh, from which Chhattisgarh has now split, and Maharashtra, which contains Mumbai, are states that are intermediate in their kinship practices. Despite being contradicted by other studies like those of George Darwin and Alan Huth in England and Robert Newman in New York, the report's conclusions were widely accepted. State Residency: Residents must apply in the county where they reside while non-residents must apply in the county where they plan to be married. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws unanimously recommended in 1970 that all such laws should be repealed, but no state has dropped its prohibition. ", "Part three: Western Desert kinship ethnography", "Part two: Some basic concepts of kinship", "The Surprising Truth About Cousins and Marriage", "The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Surname", "When Incest Is Best: Kissing Cousins Have More Kin", "Go Ahead, Kiss Your Cousin - DiscoverMagazine.com", "Marriage in the People's Republic of China: Analysis of a New Law", "Consanguinity and reproductive health among Arabs", Parallel Cousin (FBD) Marriage, Islamization, and Arabization, "How the early Christian church gave birth to today's WEIRD Europeans", Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, "There's nothing wrong with cousins getting married, scientists say", "First Cousin Marriages in Italy, by percentage (1930 - 1964)", "THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE KOREAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT", "Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China", "Cap. [160], In contrast, Maryland delegates Henry B. Heller and Kumar P. Barve sponsored a bill to ban first-cousin marriages in 2000. In some cultures, it can be looked down upon for cousins to marry cousins. [209] Social norms against such practices are quite strong as well. Those who do not wish to marry based on the personal laws governed by religious and cultural practices may opt for marriage under this law. [148], Cross-cousin and uncle-niece unions are preferential in South India, jointly accounting for some 30% of marriages in Andhra Pradesh in 1967. declining to 26% by 201516. Professor Alan Bittles of Murdoch University and Edith Cowan University in Australia has studied cousin marriages for the past 30 . [170] Morgan himself had married his cousin in 1853. However, there are a few states where it is legal to marry your first cousin. Estate of Levie (1975, Cal App 1st Dist) was a California case on a purported first-cousin marriage contracted in Nevada. By the 1870s, Lewis Henry Morgan (18181881) was writing about "the advantages of marriages between unrelated persons" and the necessity of avoiding "the evils of consanguine marriage", avoidance of which would "increase the vigor of the stock". [3] John Calvin thought of the Biblical list only as illustrative and that any relationship of the same or smaller degree as any listed, namely the third degree by the civil-law method, should therefore be prohibited. [72], Roman civil law prohibited marriages within four degrees of consanguinity. However, these results may principally reflect village endogamy rather than consanguinity per se. A marginal increase in time to first birth, from 1.6 years generally to 1.9 years in first cousins, may occur due to the younger age at marriage of consanguineous mothers and resultant adolescent subfertility or delayed consummation. [39] Very little numerical evidence exists of rates of cousin marriage in the past. Children of first-cousin marriages have an increased risk of autosomal recessive genetic disorders, and this risk is higher in populations that are already highly ethnically similar. The proportion of consanguineous marriages in the country stands at 46.2%, with significant regional variations ranging from 38.2% in Kabul province to 51.2% in Bamyan province. [11] A study indicated that between 1800 and 1965 in Iceland, more children and grandchildren were produced from marriages between third or fourth cousins (people with common great-great- or great-great-great-grandparents) than from other degrees of separation. Conflict may arise between the prohibited degrees based on this law and personal law, but in absence of any other laws, it is still unresolved. ", "Marriages among cousins increasing in UAE", "Consanguineous marriages in Afghanistan", "Prevalence and determinants of consanguineous marriage and its types in India: evidence from the National Family Health Survey, 20152016", "Laws of Civil Marriages in India A Proposal to Resolve Certain Conflicts", "A Note on Cross-Cousin Marriage among Andhra Brahmins", "Karnataka second in marriages among blood relatives, Tamil Nadu first: National family Healthy Survey", "Civil Unrest and the Current Profile of Consanguineous Marriage in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan", "Race of Wife by Race of Husband: 1960, 1970, 1980, 1991, and 1992. Marrying your first cousin, while illegal in many states, is not the worst thing you could do. [48], According to anthropologist Ladislav Hol, cousin marriage is not an independent phenomenon, but rather one expression of a wider Middle Eastern preference for agnatic solidarity, or solidarity with one's father's lineage. But for recessive conditions, a person will only develop a disease when they have mutation in both copies of the gene. In other parts of the world, marrying your first cousin is socially acceptable; in the United States, it's a bit more taboo. Cousin marriage was historically practiced by indigenous cultures in Australia, North America, South America, and Polynesia. There is however a big matter of contention surrounding the morality. To contextualize the group's size, the total proportion of interracial marriages in 1960, the last census year before the end of anti-miscegenation statutes, was 0.4%, and the proportion of black-white marriages was 0.13%. Class B misdemeanour if marriage entered into; Class A misdemeanour if the couple cohabits after being convicted of entering into a prohibited marriage. [236] In Britain, the Human Genetics Commission recommends a strategy comparable with previous strategies in dealing with increased maternal age, notably as this age relates to an increased risk of Down syndrome. Check out up-to-date information for all showings, events, activities, and happenings this week. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures: "Twenty-five states prohibit marriages between first cousins. [157] While recent studies have cast serious doubt on whether cousin marriage is as dangerous as is popularly assumed, professors Diane B. Paul and Hamish G. Spencer speculate that legal bans persist in part due to "the ease with which a handful of highly motivated activistsor even one individualcan be effective in the decentralized American system, especially when feelings do not run high on the other side of an issue. The answer depends on where you live, and how closely related your cousin is. [2][18][19][20][21], Confucius described marriage as "the union of two surnames, in friendship and in love". Terms of Service apply. [239] However, there is a large increase in fertility for 3rd and 4th cousin marriages, whose children exhibit more fitness than both unrelated individuals or 2nd cousins. According to Hol, the oft-quoted reason for cousin marriage of keeping property in the family is, in the Middle Eastern case, just one specific manifestation of keeping intact a family's whole "symbolic capital". [139] One anthropologist, Ladislav Hol, argued that it is important to distinguish between the ideal of FBD marriage and marriage as it is actually practiced, which always also includes other types of cousins and unrelated spouses. The authors note that other factors, such as restricted genetic conditions, may also explain this relationship. Copyright 2023, Thomson Reuters. Burns Ind. Endogamy is marrying within a group and in this case the group was a village. Some of these states are: Alabama. However, enforcement proved difficult and by the subsequent Qing dynasty, the former laws had been restored. Due to this association, possibly reinforced by personal interaction with a specific cousin, he may become "fond" of her, rendering the relationship "sentimentally appropriate". [228], The Latin American Collaborative Study of Congenital Malformation found an association between consanguinity and hydrocephalus, postaxial polydactyly, and bilateral oral and facial clefts. First-cousin marriage is prohibited in: Arkansas, Delaware, This persisted until after the Norman conquests in the 11th century and the synod at Cashel in 1101. Illinois. The current rate of cousin marriage there is 54%, an increase of 1218% over the previous generation. Under this system the offering of genetic counseling can be refused, unlike, for example, in the US state of Maine where genetic counseling is mandatory to obtain a marriage license for first cousins. While some proponents argue such marriages were banned until 1970, according to Frans van Poppel of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, they are confusing cousin marriage with uncle-niece marriage. Their view is that the Christian injunctions against cousin marriage were due more to ideology than to any conscious desire to acquire wealth. This follows a 2003 Steve Sailer essay published for The American Conservative, where he claimed that high rates of cousin marriage play an important role in discouraging political democracy. [30] The last form is seen as nearly incestuous and therefore prohibited, for the man and the woman in such marriage share the same surname, much resembling sibling marriage. Lvi-Strauss viewed cross-cousin marriage as a form of exogamy in the context of a unilineal descent group, meaning either matrilineal or patrilineal descent. Increases in cousin marriage in the West may also occur as a result of immigration from Asia and Africa. Is a village called Chu Ch'en [the names of the two clans]. Arkansas. [55] In Qatar, Yemen, and UAE, consanguinity rates are increasing in the current generation. [144] Practices of the small Christian minority are also location-dependent: their cousin marriage rates are higher in southern states with high overall rates. A cousin marriage is a marriage where the spouses are cousins (i.e. [177] According to the University of Minnesota's The Wake, Kahn was aware the bill had little chance of passing but introduced it anyway to draw attention to the issue. [6] Six states prohibit first-cousin-once-removed marriages. [2] Cousin marriage is an important topic in anthropology and alliance theory. [178], Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage has been found by some anthropological researchers to be correlated with patripotestal jural authority, meaning rights or obligations of the father. [28], Anthropologist Francis Hsu described a mother's brother's daughter (MBD) as being the most preferred type of Chinese cousin marriage. Though contemporaneous, the eugenics movement did not play much of a direct role in the bans. [95] They further point out that since property belonging to the nobility was typically fragmented,[clarification needed] keeping current assets in the family offered no advantage, compared with acquiring it by intermarriage. Code Wash. (ARCW) 9A.64.020 (2010), While no longer a criminal offence in Washington, prosecutions for sexual relations between cousins had taken place under a former statute. [147] The northern kinship model prevails in the states of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal. Finally, the Baggara Arabs favor MBD marriage first, followed by cross-cousin marriage if the cross cousin is a member of the same surra, a group of agnates of five or six generations depth. Consanguinity has decreased over time and particularly since the 19th century. So, for example, a first cousin once removed is either the child of your first cousin or the parent of your second cousin. George Louis Arner in 1908 considered the ban a clumsy and ineffective method of eugenics, which he thought would eventually be replaced by more refined techniques. The daughters of Eleazer also married the sons of Eleazer's brother Kish in the still later time of David (1 Chronicles 23:22). Sailer believes that because families practicing cousin marriage are more related to one another than otherwise, their feelings of family loyalty tend to be unusually intense, fostering nepotism. [112][113] Cousin marriage is also prohibited in the Philippines. Can you marry your 1st cousin? [128], The Netherlands has also had a recent debate that has reached the level of the Prime Minister proposing a cousin marriage ban. Female members of the mother's lineage are seen as only loosely related. In the longer term, rates may decline due to decreased family sizes, making it more difficult to find cousins to marry. [62] Even for a man, lacking a spouse is looked down upon. OFFENSES AGAINST THE FAMILY", "State Laws Regarding Marriages Between First Cousins", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_United_States&oldid=1152611347, States of the United States law-related lists, Articles with dead external links from November 2019, Articles with permanently dead external links, Short description with empty Wikidata description, Articles containing potentially dated statements from February 2014, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2010, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from April 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 1 May 2023, at 08:15. [233] According to a statement by the UK's Human Genetics Commission on cousin marriages, the BBC also "fails to clarify" that children born to these marriages were not found to be 13 times more likely to develop genetic disorders. Richard Curtis wrote in the ending to Four Weddings and a Funeral that Tom marries his distant cousin Deirdre, having fallen in love at a wedding - a joke about the aristocracy supposedly keeping things in the family. [47] Cousin marriage among native Middle Eastern Jews is generally far higher than among the European Ashkenazim, who assimilated European marital practices after the diaspora. ", "Lawmaker files bill raising age of marriage consent", "Trish Choate. These states are: For Muslims, governed by uncodified personal law, it is acceptable and legal to marry a first cousin, but for Hindus, it may be illegal under the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act, though the specific situation is more complex. We each carry an average of 12 genetic variants associated with recessive conditions. Specifically, it increases the chances of having a child with arecessivecondition. They cite the example of Cicero attacking Mark Antony not on the grounds of cousin marriage, but instead on grounds of Antony's divorce. [125], Cousin marriages remain legal in Germany. By the 11th century, with the adoption of the so-called canon-law method of computing consanguinity, these proscriptions had been extended even to sixth cousins, including by marriage. It is currently legal for you to marry your cousin in the UK. [4][5], In some jurisdictions, cousin marriage is legally prohibited: for example, in mainland China, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea, the Philippines and 24 of the 50 United States. [19] There is also the possibility of more births as a compensation for increased child mortality, either via a conscious decision by parents to achieve a set family size or the cessation of lactational amenorrhea following the death of an infant. Reportedly, it is a custom that in such marriages at least one spouse must be a relative, and generally such spouses were the preferred or favorite wives in the marriage and gave birth to more children. [35] During the Qing dynasty era (1636-1912), first cousin marriage was common and prevailed after the era particularly in rural regions. [44], In-marriage was more frequent in the late pre-Islamic Hijaz than in ancient Egypt. Cross-cousin marriage in effect allowed the anthropologist to control for biological degree by studying a situation where the degree of prohibited and prescribed spouses were equal. Alabama appears to have several laws voiding incestuous marriages. "[183] "In such a society even the presence of a limited amount of cross-cousin marriage will not break the isolation of the kin group, for first cross cousins often end up being second parallel cousins. [2] Put differently, a single first-cousin marriage entails a similar increased risk of birth defects and mortality as a woman faces when she gives birth at age 41 rather than at 30. Hol cited the Berta people of Sudan, who consider the FBD to be the closest kinswoman to a man outside of the prohibited range. Some variants are responsible for physical differences, such as hair or eye color. Laws relating to the marriage of first cousins are not always the same. This study implicated cousin marriage as responsible for idiocy. Correspondingly, in societies like China with patrilineal descent, marriage to a father's brother's daughter would fail at alliance building. They can provide a more accurate risk estimate based on your situation and can discuss if there is any testing available. [citation needed]. So if you marry someone who is closely related to you, there is a higher likelihood of having a child with a recessive condition. According to Andhra Pradesh oral tradition, Abhimanyu himself married his first cross-cousin Shashirekha, the daughter of Subhadra's brother Balarama. Jacob's brother Esau also married his first half-cousin Mahalath, daughter of Ishmael, Isaac's half-brother. Proactively, it is customary for parents to groom their children to know their immediate cousins and, when opportune, their distant cousins. [218], Repeated consanguineous marriages within a group are more problematic. Contact us. Some cultures, on the other hand, may encourage marriage between cousins for a variety of reasons. California. [142], Attitudes in India on cousin marriage vary sharply by region and culture. Genes are the individual units that make up our DNA. [56], Andrey Korotayev claimed that Islamization was a strong and significant predictor of parallel cousin (father's brother's daughter FBD) marriage, bint 'amm marriage. [74] Early Medieval Europe continued the late Roman ban on cousin marriage. Any couple worried about genetic risk to their children should meet with a genetic counselor. Supporters of cousin marriage where it is banned may view the prohibition as discrimination,[8][9] while opponents may appeal to moral or other arguments. Increased focus on genetic disease in developing countries may eventually result from progress in eliminating environmental diseases there as well. 765.30 (2010), National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Cousin marriage court cases in the United States, Laws regarding incest in the United States, "The Surprising Truth About Cousins and Marriage", "The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Surname", "What Are the Cousin Marriage Laws in Your State? [225][226][227] Long-term studies conducted on the Dalmatian islands in the Adriatic Sea have indicated a positive association between inbreeding and a very wide range of common adulthood disorders, including hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, uni/bipolar depression, asthma, gout, peptic ulcer, and osteoporosis. Many have rules and laws against incest (close relatives marrying one another). If more than one relationship exists between spouses, as often results from successive generations of cousin marriage, only the patrilineal one is counted. [174][175][176], A bill to repeal the ban on first-cousin marriage in Minnesota was introduced by Phyllis Kahn in 2003, but it died in committee. [54], A 2009 study found that many Arab countries display some of the highest rates of consanguineous marriages in the world, and that first cousin marriages which may reach 2530% of all marriages. You, your siblings, and your first, second,and third cousins are all of the same generation. [187], Cousins are not included in the lists of prohibited relationships set out in the Hebrew Bible, specifically in Leviticus 18:818 and 20:1121 and in Deuteronomy.[3]. [215] Sikhism largely follows the pattern of ban on the same clan marriages, many Sikhs choose to marry their children with a partner from a different village or town, just to avoid chances of consanguinity between them. [121] In his 1957 study, the rate varied from 1.8% in the south to 8.4% in the northeast, where it increased moving inward from the coast,[122] and was higher in rural regions than in urban. The HGC states that similarly, it is appropriate to offer genetic counseling to consanguineous couples, preferably before they conceive, in order to establish the precise risk of a genetic abnormality in offspring. It's just not the accepted normal thing. Groups like the Kachin exhibiting matrilateral cross-cousin marriage do not exchange women in circular structures; where such structures do exist they are unstable. [207][bettersourceneeded] Imam Shafi'i, the founder of the Shafi'i madhab, went further in his condemnation of persistent generational bloodline marriages and said, "Whenever the people of a household do not allow their women to marry men outside of their line, there will be fools among their children. In general, laws about whether it's legal to marry your cousin fall into three categories: But there are even more nuances to state laws. We all have two copies of every gene: one from mom and one from dad. [223][224], Studies into the effect of cousin marriage on polygenic traits and complex diseases of adulthood have often yielded contradictory results due to the rudimentary sampling strategies used. Alaska. Some famous historical figures married their cousins. [4] Some states prohibiting cousin marriage recognize cousin marriages performed in other states, but despite occasional claims that this holds true in general,[5] laws also exist that explicitly void all foreign cousin marriages or marriages conducted by state residents out of state. In the United States, second cousins are legally allowed to marry in every state. However, this statute was amended in 2009; while sex with close adult family members (including first cousins) remains a felony, the more serious penalty now attaches to sex with an individual's direct ancestor or descendant. They encourage their adult children to disclose their love interests for consanguineal screening. Consequently, men and women are forbidden to marry within their recent patrilineage and matrilineage. [181], Anthropologists Robert Murphy and Leonard Kasdan describe preferential parallel cousin marriage as leading to social fission, in the sense that "feud and fission are not at all dysfunctional factors but are necessary to the persistence and viability of Bedouin society". Can you marry a second cousin? The Hebrew Bible states: which translates literally as "the daughters of Zelophehad to their cousins/to their uncles' sons". [240] The total fertility increase may be partly explained by the lower average parental age at marriage or the age at first birth, observed in consanguineous marriages. Identification Needed: Photo ID is required. Scientist Albert Einstein married his second cousin Elsa. First cousins can marry in 19 states. ", "Lawmaker files bill raising age of marriage consent", "Trish Choate. And some DNA variants cause diseases. [42] In ancient Persia, the Achaemenid kings habitually married their cousins and nieces,[46] while between the 1940s and 1970s, the percentage of Iranian cousin marriages increased from 34 to 44%. Code Wash. (ARCW) 26.09.040 (2010), Rev. [97] In contrast, contemporary English law was based on official Catholic policy, and Anglo-Norman clergy often became disgusted with the Irish "law of fornication". [179] It got further than Kahn's bill, passing the House of Delegates by 82 to 46 despite most Republicans voting no, but finally died in the state senate. China has prohibited first-cousin marriage since 1981. "FLDS TRIAL: All eyes still on Jessop, for now", "85th Texas Legislature: News, issues, commentary & more", "PENAL CODE CHAPTER 25. [3], Since the 13th century, the Catholic Church has measured consanguinity according to what is called the civil-law method. Prince Philip and The Queen are even third cousins. According to some theories, in these kinship systems a man marries his matrilateral cross-cousin due to associating her with his nurturant mother. 181 Marriage Ordinance: Schedule 5 Kindred and Affinity", " ", "Consanguineous marriages Preconception consultation in primary health care settings", "Global prevalence tables - ConsangWiki - Consang.net", "Inzest: Wenn der Cousin mit der Cousine schlft", "Migration and Marriage: Examples of border artistry and cultures of migration? And in societies with both types of descent, where a person belongs to the group of his mother's mother and father's father but not mother's father or father's mother, only cross-cousin marriages would successfully build alliances. Lvi-Strauss thought that this proved that the origin of the incest prohibition is purely social and not biological. According to Luther and Calvin, the Catholic bans on cousin marriage were an expression of Church rather than divine law and needed to be abolished. Att'y Gen. 46. Their thesis is the converse of Fredrik Barth's, who describes the fission as leading to the cousin marriage. Also Krishna married his cross cousin Mitravinda (Daughter of Vasudeva's sister Rajadhi who was Queen of Avanti) and Bhadra (Daughter of Vasudeva's sister Shrutakirti who was the Queen of Kekaya Kingdom. [242] In Iceland, where marriages between second and third cousins were common, in part due to limited selection, studies show higher fertility rates. In response to the 2005 marriage of Pennsylvanian first cousins Eleanor Amrhein and Donald W. Andrews Sr. in Maryland, Heller said that he might resurrect the bill because such marriages are "like playing genetic roulette". It was estimated in 1960 that 0.2% of all marriages between Roman Catholics were between first or second cousins, but no more recent nationwide studies have been performed. "Keeping Marriage in the Family. In contrast to both Protestantism and Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox Church prohibits up to second cousins from marrying.

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