43 Facts About Cousin marriage

Cousin marriage is an important topic in anthropology and alliance theory.

Cousin marriage was historically practiced by indigenous cultures in Australia, North America, South America, and Polynesia.

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.

Cousin marriage has often been practiced to keep cultural values intact, preserve family wealth, maintain geographic proximity, keep tradition, strengthen family ties, and maintain family structure or a closer relationship between the wife and her in-laws.

Later analyses have found regional variation in these patterns; in some rural areas where cousin marriage is still common, MBD is not preferred but merely acceptable, similar to MSD.

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In some periods in Chinese history, all cousin marriage was legally prohibited, as law codes dating from the Ming dynasty attest.

Cousin marriage has been allowed throughout the Middle East for all recorded history.

Anthropologists have debated the significance of the practice; some view it as the defining feature of the Middle Eastern kinship system while others note that overall rates of cousin marriage have varied sharply between different Middle Eastern communities.

Cousin marriage rates were highest among women, merchant families, and older well-established families.

In-Cousin marriage was more frequent in the late pre-Islamic Hijaz than in ancient Egypt.

Close agnatic Cousin marriage has been seen as a result of the conceptualization of men as responsible for the control of the conduct of women.

Cousin marriage has shown that while a clear functional connection exists between Islam and FBD marriage, the prescription to marry a FBD does not appear to be sufficient to persuade people to actually marry thus, even if the marriage brings with it economic advantages.

The Afar practice a form of cousin marriage called absuma that is arranged at birth and can be forced.

Example, the marriage of Louis XIV of France and Maria Theresa of Spain was a first-cousin marriage on both sides.

The writings of Scottish deputy commissioner for lunacy Arthur Mitchell claiming that cousin marriage had injurious effects on offspring were largely contradicted by researchers such as Alan Huth and George Darwin.

In Southern Italy, cousin marriage was a usual tradition in regions such as Calabria and Sicily, where first-cousin marriage in the 1900s was near to 50 percent of all marriages.

Cousin marriage were legal in ancient Rome from the Second Punic War, until it was banned by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in 381 in the West, and until after the death of Justinian in the East, but the proportion of such marriages is not clear.

Anthropologist Jack Goody said that cousin marriage was a typical pattern in Rome, based on the marriage of four children of Emperor Constantine to their first cousins and on writings by Plutarch and Livy indicating the proscription of cousin marriage in the early Republic.

Jack Goody claimed that early Christian Cousin marriage rules forced a marked change from earlier norms to deny heirs to the wealthy and thus to increase the chance that those with wealth would will their property to the Church.

Cousin marriage was more frequent in ancient Greece, and marriages between uncle and niece were permitted there.

Anthropologist Martin Ottenheimer argues that Cousin marriage prohibitions were introduced to maintain the social order, uphold religious morality, and safeguard the creation of fit offspring.

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.

Practices of the small Christian minority are location-dependent: their cousin marriage rates are higher in southern states with high overall rates.

Cousin marriage is proscribed and seen as incest for Hindus in North India.

Consanguinity rates were generally stable across the four decades for which data exist, though second-cousin marriage appears to have been decreasing in favor of first-cousin marriage.

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Cousin marriage reportedly got the idea after learning that cousin marriage is an acceptable form of marriage among some cultural groups that have a strong presence in Minnesota, namely the Hmong and Somali.

States have various laws regarding marriage between cousins and other close relatives, which involve factors including whether or not the parties to the marriage are half-cousins, double cousins, infertile, over 65, or whether it is a tradition prevalent in a native or ancestry culture, adoption status, in-law, whether or not genetic counseling is required, and whether it is permitted to marry a first cousin once removed.

Cousin marriage stated that when she has told people about her daughter's marriage, they have been shocked and that consequently she is afraid to mention it.

In most societies, cousin marriage apparently is more common among those of low socio-economic status, among the illiterate and uneducated, and in rural areas.

One reason for this is that in many regions, cousin marriage is not merely a cultural tradition, but is judged to offer significant social and economic benefits.

Cousin marriage is important in several anthropological theories by prominent authors such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Sir Edward Tylor, and Lewis Henry Morgan.

Levi-Strauss postulated that cross-cousin marriage had the two consequences of setting up classes which automatically delimit the group of possible spouses and of determining a relationship that can decide whether a prospective spouse is to be desired or excluded.

Unlike other systems such as the levirate, the sororate, or uncle-niece marriage, cross-cousin marriage is preferential because for obvious reasons these others cannot constitute the exclusive or even preponderant rule of marriage in any group.

Consequently, cross-cousin marriage can be a normal form of marriage in a society, but the other systems above can only be privileged forms.

Cross-cousin marriage establishes a division between prescribed and prohibited relatives who, from the viewpoint of biological proximity, are strictly interchangeable.

For Levi-Strauss cross-cousin marriage was not either socially arbitrary or a secondary consequence of other institutions like dual organization or the practice of exogamy.

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.

Patrilateral cross-cousin marriage is the rarest of all types of cousin marriage, and there is some question as to whether it even exists.

Groups like the Kachin exhibiting matrilateral cross-cousin marriage do not exchange women in circular structures; where such structures do exist they are unstable.

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".

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.

Cousin marriage has a very rare recessive genetic condition, known as epidermolysis bullosa which will cause her to lead a life of extreme physical suffering, limited human contact and probably an early death from skin cancer.

Finally, in 2010 the Telegraph reported that cousin marriage among the British Pakistani community resulted in 700 children being born every year with genetic disabilities.