Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building | Hacker News Reader

Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building

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36 pointsbyrneseyeview15 comments

This article doesn't mention the cause of such high rates of inbreeding, so I'll provide that information (kindly supplied by a Muslim friend). Basically, when all the children of the family are young they play and do everything together. Childhood friends are likely to be mostly cousins and siblings. Once kids reach a certain age the genders are rigidly separated (with the burka, and adjusted living arrangements). The upshot of this is by the time a young Muslim man is ready to marry, the only women he is familiar with are the girls he grew up with. That is, his cousins.

Further, the etiquette of marriage is extremely complicated in and involves the mutual cooperation of the entire family of both the bride and the groom. So it's a much less complicated affair if the bride and the groom come from the same family--there simply won't be as many disagreements.

It should be noted that cousin-marriage is increasingly uncommon among the more affluent Muslims in countries like the UAE and Bahrain.

Once kids reach a certain age the genders are rigidly separated (with the burka, and adjusted living arrangements).

My parents are first cousins. And indeed they grew up together. But they didn't get married because they didn't have other options beyond cousins. That part doesn't ring true to my larger family's history with cousin marriages(sample size: 3 cousin marriages).

There are so many myths about the harms of cousin marriages, starting with the medical risks. But study after study have shown there is little truth to any of it.

I'm certainly not saying people don't have options beyond cousins, but would you agree that it's far more difficult to meet people beyond cousins?

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_Effect#Westermarck_... would argue against what you wrote.

I think the causes are more likely that couples meet only through introductions, and their parents know each other.

What they need are some matchmakers who make a point of knowing tons of young people, and can introduce them.

I'm aware of this effect, and the reason I think it doesn't apply is this: the children play with each other, but they are raised in separate households. (Sloppy writing on my part, I wrote "children of the family are young they play and do everything together" which was an exaggeration. My bad.)

This article is very very wrong about South Indian Hindus. I'm one and I have never heard of an uncle-niece marriage. It is a taboo. Decades ago cousin marriages were common but it has all but disappeared now and is mostly taboo.

Sadly, I think the article might be right about South Indian Hindus (I'm one too). Though very rare in modern urban areas (I think), it is definitely common in large parts of Tamil Nadu atleast. I have atleast one such couple in my extended family (they got married over 2 decades ago though).

You see this reflected in a seemingly infinite number of movie storylines - where the hero is betrothed to his sister's daughter or some such thing.

Maybe things have changed since 1985. This article found that 33% of all marriages were inbred in Bangalore, Mysore, and Karnataka: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2803361

Also, according to the article I just linked, "The highest rates of inbreeding were observed in the Hindu community among whom there was a notable preference for uncle-niece marriages."

Probably because I'm from Kerala and as mentioned in the article you linked, the incidence of cousin marriages were just 4.5%.

As if all the increase-your-productivity/get-rich-quick self-help twaddle wasn't bad enough, now there's a notorious internet racist at the top of HN.

Anybody know a tech news site that sticks to tech?

> a notorious internet racist

I'm wary of judging articles by their publishers, but here's some background on Steve:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer

He's warned of "anti-white pogroms" and thinks blacks "need stricter moral guidance from society" because of their lack of "native judgement" compared to better-educated groups.

From the FAQ:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Thusly, as a hacker or someone that knows them, I can't help but find this to be highly in the Off-Topic category, uninteresting and certainly not gratifying my intellectual curiosity.

I don't feel this as off topic. Nation is a much newer concept than clans and tribes in human history.

The same problems happened before in early 20th Century China. Both Nationalists and Communist governments in China tried very hard for a long time to remove clan and tribal influence and a lot of bloody consequences happened. So this is part of social science. (though social science is political and not real science).

For some informed data on the topic instead, try http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/us/few-risks-seen-to-the-c...

or, more recently: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/garden/26cousins.html

"Dr. Motulsky said researchers did not know why marriage between cousins was viewed with such distaste in the United States. He said some of the revulsion might have stemmed from the eugenics movement, which intended to improve the human race by deciding who should be allowed to breed. The movement flourished in this country early in the 20th century."

Anti-cousin-marriage is a very recent and very American thing, and stems from the same movement that gave us nazi racism.

> Anti-cousin-marriage is a very recent and very American thing, and stems from the same movement that gave us nazi racism.

Actually, eugenics in the US was a Progressive thing. They also pushed segregation. They were national while their allies, Jim Crow Democrats, were strictly southern.

After a while, "Progressive" came to be seen as a bad label, so those folks started calling themselves "liberal".

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