Close-kin Marriage Research Articles

Close-kin marriage – An injustice to forthcoming generations

Consanguineous marriage is the union between two individuals who are related as second cousins or closer and who have a common ancestor. There are various contributing factors to these marriages, namely, economic, cultural, social factors, and cultural isolation. Many societies nowadays do not allow marriages between close relatives, perhaps as a result of observations on the progeny of consanguineous marriages and the fear of unhealthy offsprings. This review article mainly intends to throw light on the genetic abnormalities caused by consanguineous marriages. It aspires to reveal the mystery behind the uncut diamonds sparkling as healthy children.

Precision medicine: Rare diseases and community genetics

Precision medicine is based on the premise that genomic analysis radically changes the nature and scope of therapeutic medicine. While genome sequencing has revolutionized the study of human disease, to date progress in translating genomic knowledge into treatments for inherited disorders has been less apparent. However, increasing attention on the relationship(s) between rare diseases (RDs) and precision medicine should significantly accelerate this process, as evidenced by the increasing numbers of molecular therapies receiving approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. There are an estimated 7000 RDs, a majority of which affect <1/million people; but, collectively, it has been calculated that in high-income countries ≥1/17 persons have a RD. RDs represent both a significant health challenge and a major economic burden for many affected individuals and their families, and although many are life-threatening, they often remain undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. Unfortunately, global progress in resolving these issues has been hindered by basic problems such as differing national and regional definitions, from a RD prevalence of 1 to 5/10,000 affected persons in Europe and Australia to 1/500,000 in China. There also has been failure to recognize that many RDs originated as founder mutations and are community-specific, an especially important consideration in populations where community endogamy is the rule and close-kin marriage is traditional. The near-global transition from a communicable to a predominantly noncommunicable disease profile has, however, served to highlight the importance of genetics in medicine, and resulted in a rapidly growing focus on RDs. Against this background, collaborative international programs to facilitate the prevention and curative treatment of RDs merit urgent adoption and support.

Kin Endogamy and the Blood Taint in Ancient Egypt and Nigeria

Kin Endogamy, marriage between siblings, has been a practice among several cultures of the world. This is a deviation from positions of sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists on a universal incest taboo even as they premised it on four theories; the demographic, indifference, repression and evolution theories. Several scholars have discussed kin endogamy in the pre-Christian and Christian eras of the Greco-Roman societies citing evidences; explaining that indication of close-kin marriage could have been adoption rather than incest; and noting that royal incest may have been occasioned by the quest for ultimate power, even in the Ptolemaic dynasty. This paper took an in-depth study of sibling marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt and in some communities in Nigeria, with a view to understanding the rationale behind this socio-cultural practice and its effects on inbred children. The paper argues that it is highly probable that this consanguineous marriage even among the Ptolemies of Egypt may have resulted in genetic/biological and psychological setbacks among inbred descendants such that assassinations among siblings for power became the order of the day. The study further argued that kin endogamy was practiced due to, among others, the ideology of the blood taint or pure blood. Further studies that may examine exogamous culture in the Greco-Roman world and Nigeria were recommended.Key words: Endogamy, Blood taint, Inbreeding depression, Ptolemaic Egypt, Nigeria.

Close-kin Marriages in Menander

Close-kin Marriages in Menander

What has the ‘first sexual revolution’ to do with kinship transition? ‘Kin marriages’ and illicit sexuality in nineteenth-century Alpine Switzerland

This paper questions the link between two major transformations observed in eighteenth century Europe: the reorganization of kinship structures and kinship solidarities on the one hand and the so-called ‘sexual revolution’ of the eighteenth century on the other, i.e. the spectacular rise of illegitimacy throughout Europe. Raising the question of this link has far-reaching theoretical implications, since the fundamental changes in kinship and sexuality have been treated so far as two independent phenomena in separate domains. The results presented in this paper refer to mountain villages of the Swiss Alps and base on genealogical data extracted from a large dynamic database called the Registre historique de la population du Valais. They suggest that the remarkable increase of close kin marriages was closely connected with changes in sexual habits and with the building of different sexual milieus. The ‘sexual revolution’ in the Entremont region was largely the issue of a few families and kin groups tending to build tightly knitted networks. In this perspective, the increase of kin marriages reflected the diversification of political and sexual milieus, characterized by different values, ideologies and attitudes. This profound diversification of life styles shows that social change did not affect local societies as a whole, but was supported by particular milieus made cohesive by privileged alliances within kin groups and by particular network patterns.

Marital Liberalization in Relation to Life Satisfaction

Marital liberalization in terms of public support for polygamous, underage or child, and consanguineous or close-kin marriages emerges to be controversial and requires more understanding. A possible understanding is that such liberalization is unconventional and thus impedes integration with society. According to this social integration vision, marital liberalization is incompatible with marriage and religiosity and inimical to life satisfaction. To examine this vision, this study analyzes data obtained from a random-sample survey of 2099 Hong Kong Chinese adults. Results support the vision in that life satisfaction was significantly lower in those favoring marital liberalization, who were significantly lower in religiosity and more likely unmarried. This implies that marital liberalization is incompatible with social integration.

CLOSE-KIN MARRIAGE IN ROMAN ANATOLIA

Many societies have a normative preference for close-kin marriage of one or another variety. Whether this was true of any part of the Roman world has been hotly debated in recent decades. Earlier scholarship suggests that marriage between close kin may have been considerably more common in some parts of the Roman world (e.g. Egypt) than in others (e.g. the Latin West). This paper assembles the evidence for close-kin marriage throughout the Asia Minor peninsula during the Roman Imperial period, and concludes that close-kin marriage – particularly in the form of FBD (father's brother's daughter) first-cousin marriage – may have been unusually common and/or normatively desirable in Lykia and neighbouring regions.

Kinship in rural Pakistan: Consanguineous marriages and their implications for women

Synopsis Based on an ethnographic study in the Khairpur region of Pakistan, this article examines consanguineous marriages which remain the preferred choice among rural Pakistanis; these marriages are central to the kinship system and are used to strengthen ties within the kin group. I seek to explore the under-explained factors that make consanguineous marriages so strongly favored in the patrilineal and patriarchal kinship system of rural Pakistan. I argue that close kin marriages offer social as well as economic benefits to the villagers and fulfill their need for social security, which the state fails to provide, but carry considerable costs for women. Despite this, women themselves favor these marriages. I explore this paradox in relation to the constrained lives women lead within a strongly patriarchal gender order.

Paul John Frandsen, Incestuous and Close-Kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia. An Examination of the Evidence

Article Paul John Frandsen, Incestuous and Close-Kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia. An Examination of the Evidence was published on August 1, 2012 in the journal Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung (volume 129, issue 1).

Incestuous and Close-kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia: An Examination of the Evidence

Incestuous and Close-kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia: An Examination of the Evidence

Searching the Frequency of the Close Kin Marriage for the Disability and the Disabled People in Adana\s Town Havutlu

The research is performed in Havutlu public health center in Yuregir county of Adana province. The purpose of this research is to determine the density, types and epidemiological properties of defectiveness in Havutlu public health center region. It is a cross-sectional study. 708 people are selected randomly for the research from ETF. The density of defectiveness is detected as %23,3 for this research. The density of defectiveness in our research is detected higher than the most of the studies in the world. The mostly stated defect is visseral anomaly which is %51,6. The relative marriage density is found as %20,6. The results in our research are similar with the other studies. The defectiveness density is found as %44.5 from the childs of relative marriages and found as %17.8 from non-relative marriages. After statistical analysis it is determined that the defectiveness is significantly high in relatives (p

Incest Laws and Absent Taboos in Roman Egypt

For at least two hundred and fifty years, many men in the Roman province of Egypt married their full sisters and raised families with them. During the same era, Roman law firmly banned close-kin marriages and denounced them both as nefas, or sacrilegious, and against the ius gentium, the laws shared by all civilized peoples. In Egypt, however, Roman officials deliberately chose not to enforce the relevant marriage laws among the Greek metic, hybrid, and native Egyptian populations; the bureaucracy also created loopholes within new laws which tolerated the practice. This policy created a gap between the absolute theoretical ban in Roman law and the reality of common incestuous unions in Egypt. Since Roman Egypt was both an important and a dangerous province, Rome needed both to pacify its people and to weaken Egypt’s status with its neighbors. By permitting incestuous marriages among non-Romans in Egypt, the Roman governors simultaneously pleased the local population while causing Jews and North Africans to hold their neighbor in contempt.

Annie Darwin's death, the evolution of tuberculosis and the need for systems epidemiology

When Charles Darwin’s daughter Anne Elizabeth (‘Annie’, Photograph 1) died at the age of 10 years on April 23, 1851 her parents were devastated. Charles Darwin was a devoted father and constantly concerned about the health of his 10 children. His concerns were also motivated by fear of the consequences of marriage between relatives: Emma Wedgewood, his wife, was also his first cousin. The possible adverse effects of consanguineous marriage, which was not uncommon in England at that time, were a matter of debate. Annie’s death, and self-fertilization experiments in plants, made him suspect that ‘marriage between near relations is likewise injurious’. In 1870, Darwin motivated his mathematician son George to study the prevalence of close-kin marriages in patients in asylums in comparison with the prevalence of the general population. The study, which is reprinted in this issue of the journal, with several commentaries, was first published in 1875 and concluded that ‘the evil [of marriages between cousins] has been often much exaggerated’ and that ‘under favourable conditions of life, the apparent ill-effects were frequently almost nil’. Indeed, Annie died after a lingering illness, most likely of tuberculosis (TB) caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and not of the consequences of a high coefficient of inbreeding (the F coefficient that features in one commentary). Of note, although

Companionate marriage in India: the changing marriage system in a middle‐class Brahman subcaste

The Eighteen‐Village Vattimas are a Tamil Brahman subcaste. They were formerly rural landlords, but today they mostly belong to the urban middle class. In recent decades, the Vattimas' marriage system has changed markedly. Child marriage has ended and the age of marriage has since risen further. Close‐kin marriage is no longer preferred, although subcaste endogamy remains the norm. Nevertheless, the education and employment of individuals, and their personal compatibility, have now become crucial criteria, and young men and women are involved in arranging their own marriages. Among the Vattimas (like other Indians), a form of arranged, endogamous companionate marriage has now developed, which plays a fundamental role in reproducing both caste and the middle class in contemporary India.RésuméLes Vattimas des Dix‐huit Villages forment une sous‐caste de brahmanes tamouls. Ces anciens propriétaires terriens ruraux sont aujourd’hui pour la plupart intégrés à lamiddle classurbaine. Depuis quelques dizaines d’années, leur système matrimonial a considérablement évolué. On ne marie plus les enfants et l’âge du mariage ne cesse de reculer. Le mariage entre proches parents n’est plus privilégié, bien que l’endogamie au sein de la sous‐caste reste la norme. En tout état de cause, l’éducation, l’occupation professionnelle et la compatibilité personnelle des futurs époux sont devenus des critères essentiels, et les jeunes gens des deux sexes s’impliquent dans l’arrangement de leur propre mariage. Parmi les Vattimas, comme chez d’autres Indiens, on voit apparaître une forme d’endogamie arrangée, qui joue un rôle fondamental dans la reproduction de la caste aussi bien que de la classe moyenne dans l’Inde contemporaine.

Putative Persian perversities: Indian Buddhist condemnations of Zoroastrian close-kin marriage in context

AbstractAncient and medieval sources from Greece to Korea speak of the morally reprehensible habits of the Persians, who engage in close-kin marriage. Indian Buddhist texts also preserve similar ideas. One interesting passage in a narrative text makes use of this motif in a particularly interesting way, thereby indicating the character who appeals to the trope as ethically beyond the pale. The present paper explores the background of this common depiction of Persian marriage customs for its own intrinsic interest, and as a means to explicate the passage in question.

Marriage, Kinship, and Islamic Law in Al-Andalus: Reflections on Pierre Guichard's Al-Ándalus

In his important book on society in Islamic Spain, Al-Ándalus, Pierre Guichard theorises that until the late fourth/tenth century Arabs and Berbers followed what he calls an Eastern family pattern, meaning that they married within the extended family, disinherited women, and calculated kinship through the male line. The subject population, whether they converted to Islam or not, maintained a Western pattern of marrying out, allowing women to inherit, and recognising kinship through the male and female lines. Recently published collections of rulings from Islamic courts, however, complicate the picture Guichard presents. They suggest that Islamic law, which neither favours nor discourages close kin marriage, allows women to inherit property, and recognizes bilateral kinship, was influential well before the late tenth century. Its influence challenged the Eastern kinship model Guichard documents, particularly in the area of women's property rights.

Risk, trust, gender and transnational cousin marriage among British Pakistanis

The substantial numbers of incoming spousal migrants from Pakistan is a notable feature of contemporary British immigration. This article argues for the utility of viewing such marriages, which are commonly between cousins, not only in terms of migration strategies or kinship obligations, but as part of the negotiation of the risks of marriage in a transnational context. Focusing on matches between British women and men from Pakistan, it explores conceptualizations of marriage and risk, relatedness and place, and closeness and distance, to explain the appeal of transnational close kin marriage. But while these arrangements hope to reduce some risks, they also produce others, generated both by the incentives of migration, and by internal logics of marriages between relatives. Marital choices among British Pakistanis, and resulting migration, can thus be seen as a consequence of a culturally-grounded dialogue on risk and how best it can be managed.

Close relationships: incest and inbreeding in classical Arabic literature

Close Relationships is Geert Jan van Gelder's groundbreaking and comprehensive study of the diverse facts and opinions concerning incest and close-kin marriage found in literary and non-literary pre-modern Arabic texts. The pre-Islamic Arabs knew about the dangers of inbreeding; the Qur'an formulates the basic principles of marriage impediments in Islam, which were elaborated by generations of jurists. Incest is a motif found in lampoons, anecdotes, stories, legends, dream interpretation, and polemics with other religions, in particular the Zoroastrians, who in pre-Islamic times allegedly recommended next-of-kin marriage. Many of the relevant passages are presented as English translations in this richly documented book.

Consanguineous marriage among the Fulani.

The Fulani are a broad ethnic category of nomadic and seminomadic pastoralists and agropastoralists living in the semiarid Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa. The Fulani are patrilineal, patrilocal, and moderately polygynous, with arranged first marriages accompanied by the payment of bridewealth, ideally in the form of cattle. Consanguineous marriage is frequent, with first or second cousin marriage preferred. In this paper we present data on levels of consanguineous marriage among the Fulani of northern Burkina Faso and test the hypothesis that inbreeding may be more frequent when there is a scarcity of cattle available, since bridewealth demands are thought to be reduced with close-kin marriage. Among 308 women's marriages, 203 (65.8%) were between kin up to and including second cousins, and 102 (33.1%) were between nonkin. Among 276 men's marriages, 196 (71.0%) were between kin up to and including second cousins, and 77 (27.9%) were between nonkin. The mean population inbreeding coefficient (alpha) was 0.0355 for women, and 0.0374 for men. No increase was found in population levels of inbreeding estimated from marriages contracted after the droughts of 1973 and 1984, which drastically reduced the Fulani's cattle stocks. However, a significantly higher rate of consanguineous marriage was found in families owning the fewest cattle.

Prelates and Princes: Aristocratic Marriages, Canon Law Prohibitions, and Shifts in Norms and Patterns of Domination in the Central Middle Ages

In this article, the author explores the processes whereby, at the turn of the twelfth century, European aristocrats acknowledged clerics' prohibitions of divorce and close-kin marriages. He argues that this normative shift cannot be adequately accounted for by the rise of feudalism, the Gregorian reformers' moralist offensive or the development of canon law : these events do not explain (1) why the Roman hierarchy thought it possible, at a certain moment in time, to impose their normative preferences on reluctant elites; or (2) why aristocrats eventually yielded to demands that undermined their autonomy of choice regarding marriage. He addresses both problems by considering two analytically distinct transformative processes. One concerns the symbolic and institutional conditions that allowed Roman prelates to substantiate their normative claims : the Church hierarchy emphasized the sacramental and spiritual significance of the marital tie and implemented reforms intended to preclude collusive practices between lords and bishops. The second process highlights how canonical rules of marriage were converted into effective normative constraints : in a context marked by the patrimonialization of feudal relations and an increase in competition, aristocrats relied on ecclesiastical standards for their own regulatory and strategic interests