January 13, 2010 • 18 mins
In the United States, marriage between cousins is a controversial topic, though it is legal in about half the states. Molly and Cristen explore why marriage between cousins is considered taboo in some places in this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to step Mom Never Told You?
From housetop works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen Christine over Holliday break
(00:22):
a spect some time. We're paying myself with all my
favorite television shows. It's not on the air anymore. It's
called arrested development. Oh, such a good one. And uh
one of one of my favorite plot lines and arrested
development is some some cousin lust. Cousin lust, so I'm
going to define it. There's a character named George Michael.
(00:42):
It's a character named Maybe the first cousins, and yet
they can't deny the feelings between them. Well, I think
George Michael can't deny his feelings to it. And maybe
we were not entirely sure of if Maybe wants him back.
I believe in season two the whole reason she wants
to get with Steve Holt is because she's got the
crush on George Michael. See, obviously I need to reoquait
(01:04):
myself with the rest of development as well. And I mean,
I don't know is it a spoiler alert of the
show has been off for like a few years now. No,
people should have watched it by now. Guys, you hear
that you should have watched it by now, and maybe
it's still be on the air. But I just want
to say, there's a point when these cousins get married
and the whole you know, George Michael really struggles with
this guilt he's got first cousin because it just doesn't
(01:25):
seem right, It doesn't seem proper, the marriage, you know,
it freaks both of them out. But the fact of
the matter is that show takes place in California, which
makes a marriage between first cousins perfectly legal. Yes, throw
away your preconceived notions of hillbilly's marrying their cousins, which
I think is a very common stereotype. But cousin marriage
is legal in California, but not in Kentucky. Right, It's
(01:48):
kind of weird. It's uh, it's illegal in states A
K A half the Union, you know, so it's kind
of a roll of the dice. Maybe you can get married,
maybe not here in our fair state of of Georgia.
It is kind of unsurprisingly legal. Um, but it's also
legal in all of Europe and Canada. You know, the
(02:08):
US is kind of you know, just holding out on
the rest of the world with his cousin marriage. Right.
Maybe that's why Arrested Development didn't catch on outside the US,
because they watched the show and they're like, so he
so he likes his cousin. I mean, Michael takes maybe
to see this movie. It's a French movie about love
between cousins. He keeps going, I like the way they think,
but that's how a lot of the world thinks. It's
(02:29):
like the U s didn't get this memo that cousins
are okay, but are they? As soon as you hear this,
you're like, I don't want to marry my cousin, but
there are people out there that do want to marry
their cousin there. Yeah, and uh. There was this article
that we ran across from two thousand nine November two
thousand one, very recent, uh, talking about some first cousins
who had gotten married. And my favorite part of the
(02:50):
article was when she said that she refers to her
partner as her or her spouse as her husband. It's adorable.
I don't know if adorable is the right word, but
it's it's unique. Yes, And evidently they have this family,
this couple picture of themselves and the frame says cousins
(03:12):
at the top and then the bottom is like the
best thing in life is family or something like that.
It really freaks them all out. It freaks them all out.
I will say that that's where, um, that couple kind
of crossed the line between me being sympathetic for them
and may being a little freaked out, because I mean,
if you're gonna put a picture of yourself as a
couple in a frame, I don't know if I would
have picture the frame. Um. But again that may just
(03:33):
be our preconceived notions coming into this. So let's take
a backwards step look at it with our clear eyed,
open minded view. We try to bring to mom stuff.
And I think that most people when they think about
cousins getting married is like, what will happen to the children? Yes,
and I have a child who is eight armed and
cross side Probably not Molly, No, of course not. And
(03:56):
we know this from a very often sided article in
the Journal Genetic Counseling in two thousand. To lay it
on us, Kristen, Yes, this groundbreaking study said that the
risk of serious genetic defects like spina bifida and cystic fibrosis,
and the children of first cousins does exist, but it
(04:18):
is very small, one point seven to two point eight
percentage points higher than for children of unrelated risk, who
face a three to four percent risk. And that's basically
a direct quote from the New York Times um and
this is roughly equivalent to that of children of women
giving birth in their early forties. Right, we've all heard
(04:39):
that there's a higher risk of something going wrong with
the child if the if the mother's over forty. Apparently
that's the same risk you have if you have a
child with your cousin. Now, the mortality rate in that
two thousand two articles of a child of first cousins
was given as being four point four percentage points higher
than the child of unrelated parents, which us seem pretty high,
(05:00):
But more recent studies are suggesting that that's coming down,
that it might just be like three point five percent
points higher. Yeah, not only for this podcast, I think
we're going to need to put on our science lab coats, okay,
because we're gonna have to talk about talk about genetics,
talk about some science stuff. Because when we're talking about
the risks of inbreeding, which you know, cousin cousin love.
(05:24):
It's in breeding, folks. Uh. The thing that is going
to determine whether or not we're gonna have some sort
of crazy defects has to go. It has to do
with Sounder effect and Founder effect is basically when the
you take the two genes from the two parents and
(05:45):
what happens when you combine them together in a genetic stewpot.
So in that genetic stewpot, what you want to minimize
our things called elital recessives. These are the things that
will eventually lead to neurodegenerative diseases. The you know, the
the variant genes that can pop up and rereak havoc
on a child. Now, if you start with a really
(06:07):
great bloodline, then the fact is that you're, you know,
you're minimizing your chance of their obsessives passing their way down.
The reason that inbreeding can make people nervous is that
if you know one parent has their recessive and one
parent doesn't because they're unrelated, then the chance that the
child will get their obsessive is minimized. Right. However, if
your cousin has their obsessive and you have their assessive,
(06:29):
then the child will likely have a recessive gene and
have higher risk for something down the line that can
compromise their health. And obviously the chances of that you
very closely related parents having the same recessive genes are
much higher because they're more genetically similar. And uh, it's
interesting that there's an article that we found in Discover
magazine talking about genetics and inbreeding and all of that,
(06:53):
and it points out that, um, the roths child kind
of dynasty that practiced in breeding didn't have a lot
of genetic defects that were passed on the line because
they had a healthy founder effect, like the two parents
who started had you know, healthy genes and it kind
of went down the line. There weren't all these weird
diseases that popped up later in life. But that's not
(07:15):
always the case. But the thing about um this now
is that with the rise of genetic testing, will all
be able to know what recessive genes we have. And
you know, you think back to the podcast we did
about how we'll have children in the future. I mean,
it's very possible that two cousins could get tested see that,
you know, neither the carrier for the recessive gene or
that one is and one isn't, and they'll know that's
(07:35):
a good match and that they could go ahead and
have a baby. Yeah, and maybe we should point out
on the pro side of cousin marriage. Uh Discovered points
out that there are three major reasons why why it's
it could be a good thing. First of all, you
have um a shared set of cultural values. All right,
there's a higher chance that your spouses are going to
(07:56):
be compatible because your family already family in family reunions
will just be like just coming over on a Saturday
games so easy. And then you have minimized the need
to break up family wealth as in the case of
the Rothschilds. And I think the DuPont family also practiced
in breeding at some point for for those purposes, to
(08:17):
keep the wealth and the family the money in the family. Yeah,
actually it was pre interesting. Discovered points out that what
the Rothschilds did was that um female descendants were cut
off from any sort of inheritance, so to get their
doe they had to marry their cousin. And you know,
Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin both married first cousins so
(08:38):
you know, it's it's looking good for cousins, so fluxka.
But you know it's not all it's not all love
and roses. Let's turn our attention to a community Bradford,
England where uh, it's very common for the Pakistani's who
lived there to marry their cousins. Yes, the majority of
this community can trace their origins all the way back
to a village in Kashmir and a lot of it's
(09:01):
a pretty common cultural practice for these people to you know,
to marry close cousins. But that's had negative health effects
over the years. Specifically, the BBC reports um that at
least of British Pakistani's are married to first cousins um.
And it's you know, it's pretty common among other South
(09:23):
Asian communities, in some Middle Eastern communities as well. Um.
But it says on the whole British Pakistani's are thirteen
times more likely to have children with genetic disorders and
the general population, and they account for just over three
percent of all births but have just under one third
of all British children with such illnesses. And they think
this is largely attributed to inbreeding. Right, So it basically
(09:47):
it's unpredictable. You can draw a good hand like the rothschild,
you can draw shoddy hand like the people on Bradford.
So that's sort of the genetic side of it. That's
a large part of why people oppose marriage between cousins.
So let's take a step back and say, if there's
you know, the genetic crap shoot as to how the
children will turn out, what are the other reasons for
(10:09):
objecting two cousins getting married? Um? The Bible says, it's okay,
there's no restriction in the Bible of marriage between cousins. Um.
But this is an argument that's come up before slippery slope. Yes,
if you let your you know, if you let two
cousins get married or all of a sudden, is a
daughter gonna want to marry a father? Is a brother
(10:31):
gonna want to marry a sister? That's when you start
to feel a little, a little ikey. But I think
this is a good time to point out the difference
between inbreeding and incests. A lot of times we kind
of lumps the two together because you know, obviously insists
is a form of inbreeding, but in nature, inbreeding can
(10:51):
have very positive results. This Discover article points out um
a study that was done by a biologist, William Shields
at the State University of New York UM looking at
the way that young birds will inbreed, but they will
avoid incests. They leave the nest and they move about
(11:13):
four or five home ranges away, not super far away,
so they're still going to be pretty closely related to
the birds that they end up mating with. However, they're
staying away from the other birds in their home ness.
So the thing is that if you're too familiar with
the people in your nest, be it birds or humans,
(11:34):
then um, then you won't want to marry them, but
you'll want someone who's kind of similar. And if you
think about it, our ancestors couldn't really move that far away.
They're like the birds, they can only go a few
nests over. And so Discover estimates that what like of
all marriages and history are between people who are as
closely related as second cousins. Yeah, and Patrick Bateson, who's
(11:54):
a professor of ethology at Cambridge UM, kind of argues
that you know, if you go too far outside of
your you know, genetic line, it can have unintended negative
results and He points to the example of the difference
of teeth and jaw size, like, if I, you know
I have I don't know how to describe my teeth.
(12:14):
But let's say I marry some lovely I have perfect
deep and if I marry someone with weird, scraggly d
and our kids might have kind of crazy jaws. That's
basically is a his argument. And and these days it
would be fine because our kid would just go get
braces and take care of it and whatever. But back
in the day when dentistry was very rudimentary, that would
(12:36):
not have been an option, and they would have had
all sorts of health problems because of that. And he
refers to this um in Nate drive. We have to
find mates that are kind of similar to ourselves as
something called assortive mating, which basically kind of down the
line is in breeding, very distant in breeding, but in
(12:58):
breeding nonetheless, So people who want to marry a cousin
claim that for them not to be allowed to do
so is some form of genetic discrimination that basically nature
and history has kind of led us to this sort
of mating. You find someone you're really compatible with, um
and that the odds of genetics are no more against
(13:19):
them than someone else. You know, we don't ban women
from over forty of having children. We don't ban people
with diseases that we know that can be passed on,
like Huntington's disease. We don't ban them from having children.
So why then should these couples be banned? Is there
is there a question? So I think that it's just
something to think about. I don't want to come down
pro cousin love or anti cousin love, um, but something
(13:40):
to think about. I also found a found it pretty interesting.
One of these articles pointed out that a lot of
these states prohibit cousins from getting married because of how
the children will turn out. Right, And then there are
a lot of people who make the argument that gay
people shouldn't get married because they can't have children, and
that is um, violating some of marriage. Why. I mean,
(14:02):
everyone's just so worried about children when people just want
to get married. Now, maybe Molly and this is a
revolutionary idea, is so spare with me? Okay, maybe the
problem is just marriage itself. Maybe to solve all of
these problems in one fell swoop, get rid of marriage. WHOA, yeah,
(14:24):
how about that? Some to ponder. Something to ponder so
let us know, is it's the is cousin love enough
to get rid of marriage altogether? I mean it would.
It would eliminate this issue of cousin love, gay marriage,
the high divorce rate, all of it just gone gone.
The more marriage. What we have to talk about, Uh, babies,
(14:47):
we still have babies, would have babies. Girls love to
talk about babies. Just kidding, um, So what do you
guys think? Should we get rid of marriage? Should we
marry our cousins? And if you are someone who is
married to a cousin, tell us your story. I am
very interested to hear this. Molly and I are very
open minded and non gunge mill, so don't be don't
be scared to share. And speaking of sharing, why don't
(15:10):
we share some listener mail. Let's so, Molly, I will
start off with a dad's point of view on Disney princesses.
And this comes from Mark and he has a five
year old daughter and he says, my daughter does love
to play dress up. We happen to have a sizeable
(15:32):
amount of princess paraphernalia around the house. I don't know
how that will evolve, but she seems, but she's been
into the fairy stuff for more than a year, and
I'm pretty sure she's on the young side of Disney's
target audience. I heard a report on NPR just after
the tinker Bell movie came out that Disney was trying
to provide an intermediate step for young girl's interest because
many five to eight year olds were getting interested in
high school musical that was driving the older kids away
(15:53):
from that and merchandise because it was uncool to like
the same things little kids liked. And he said that
it worked in his household, that he's watched the tinker
Bell movies many times, and he said, I have to
admit that disnease. Approach with the first tinker Bell movie
is a completely different from the classic princess movies. There's
no love and trist in the movie at all. She
has to navigate personal decisions and accept the consequences of
(16:15):
those decisions and find a new solution. This is a
very good and modern message. Personally, I hope to keep
her more interested in Pixar films like Wally Cars, Monsters, inc.
He seem to have a much more modern approach to
a child's development and much better morals than anything I've
seen from Disney in recent history. So thank you Mark.
All right, and I'll read one from trist To before
(16:36):
we close up the mailbag. She writes, growing up, I
was Cinderella, so I find discussion and controversy surrounding the
princesses to be very interesting. While I can understand where
people are coming from when they worry about the aesthetics
of the princesses, I get very frustrated when they try
to pin many of the body issues young girls face
on them. Now, don't get me wrong, I too get
frustrated with how teeny tiny these cartoon girls can be. However,
(16:56):
as a young woman who struggled with an e distorter,
I can tell you that it's those who are closest
to you who do the most damaged, not some animated
ideal in fairytale land. These women who fussed and clamorate
Disney for portraying damaging images need to look at their
own lives and see how they treat their bodies and
their daughters. I can tell you the exact moment my
body image issues started, and it was an off hand
comment for my mother. It was a wonderful parent and
(17:16):
never imagined she was saying anything so damaging. We read
a clothing store and I asked for a size eight
Geane instead of six, and she commented that I gained weight.
That was all it took. And the ensuing years of
being in the performing arts only exacerbated issues, as I
was repeately told my look wasn't right or that I
needed to drop a few pounds. I was a size
six at the time. But if a mother has a
(17:37):
balance accepting view of herself encourages a healthy self image
and a healthy life style and her family, that confidence
rubs off and allows her to take criticism and shrug
it off a lot easier. Your niece Kristen isn't going
to grow up thinking I wish I was as thin
as that snow white I'm going to go starve myself.
If all she remembers is you telling her how gorgus
she looked in that costume, Well it so wonderful. You
(17:57):
know you guys did more emails, please for us to read.
Our email is mom stuff at how stuff works dot com.
During the week, you should head on over to our blog.
It's called how to Stuff and you can find that
and lots of articles written by Molly and myself at
how stuff works dot com. For more on this and
(18:22):
thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house. Stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
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are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to step Mom Never Told You?
From housetop works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen Christine over Holliday break
(00:22):
a spect some time. We're paying myself with all my
favorite television shows. It's not on the air anymore. It's
called arrested development. Oh, such a good one. And uh
one of one of my favorite plot lines and arrested
development is some some cousin lust. Cousin lust, so I'm
going to define it. There's a character named George Michael.
(00:42):
It's a character named Maybe the first cousins, and yet
they can't deny the feelings between them. Well, I think
George Michael can't deny his feelings to it. And maybe
we were not entirely sure of if Maybe wants him back.
I believe in season two the whole reason she wants
to get with Steve Holt is because she's got the
crush on George Michael. See, obviously I need to reoquait
(01:04):
myself with the rest of development as well. And I mean,
I don't know is it a spoiler alert of the
show has been off for like a few years now. No,
people should have watched it by now. Guys, you hear
that you should have watched it by now, and maybe
it's still be on the air. But I just want
to say, there's a point when these cousins get married
and the whole you know, George Michael really struggles with
this guilt he's got first cousin because it just doesn't
(01:25):
seem right, It doesn't seem proper, the marriage, you know,
it freaks both of them out. But the fact of
the matter is that show takes place in California, which
makes a marriage between first cousins perfectly legal. Yes, throw
away your preconceived notions of hillbilly's marrying their cousins, which
I think is a very common stereotype. But cousin marriage
is legal in California, but not in Kentucky. Right, It's
(01:48):
kind of weird. It's uh, it's illegal in states A
K A half the Union, you know, so it's kind
of a roll of the dice. Maybe you can get married,
maybe not here in our fair state of of Georgia.
It is kind of unsurprisingly legal. Um, but it's also
legal in all of Europe and Canada. You know, the
(02:08):
US is kind of you know, just holding out on
the rest of the world with his cousin marriage. Right.
Maybe that's why Arrested Development didn't catch on outside the US,
because they watched the show and they're like, so he
so he likes his cousin. I mean, Michael takes maybe
to see this movie. It's a French movie about love
between cousins. He keeps going, I like the way they think,
but that's how a lot of the world thinks. It's
(02:29):
like the U s didn't get this memo that cousins
are okay, but are they? As soon as you hear this,
you're like, I don't want to marry my cousin, but
there are people out there that do want to marry
their cousin there. Yeah, and uh. There was this article
that we ran across from two thousand nine November two
thousand one, very recent, uh, talking about some first cousins
who had gotten married. And my favorite part of the
(02:50):
article was when she said that she refers to her
partner as her or her spouse as her husband. It's adorable.
I don't know if adorable is the right word, but
it's it's unique. Yes, And evidently they have this family,
this couple picture of themselves and the frame says cousins
(03:12):
at the top and then the bottom is like the
best thing in life is family or something like that.
It really freaks them all out. It freaks them all out.
I will say that that's where, um, that couple kind
of crossed the line between me being sympathetic for them
and may being a little freaked out, because I mean,
if you're gonna put a picture of yourself as a
couple in a frame, I don't know if I would
have picture the frame. Um. But again that may just
(03:33):
be our preconceived notions coming into this. So let's take
a backwards step look at it with our clear eyed,
open minded view. We try to bring to mom stuff.
And I think that most people when they think about
cousins getting married is like, what will happen to the children? Yes,
and I have a child who is eight armed and
cross side Probably not Molly, No, of course not. And
(03:56):
we know this from a very often sided article in
the Journal Genetic Counseling in two thousand. To lay it
on us, Kristen, Yes, this groundbreaking study said that the
risk of serious genetic defects like spina bifida and cystic fibrosis,
and the children of first cousins does exist, but it
(04:18):
is very small, one point seven to two point eight
percentage points higher than for children of unrelated risk, who
face a three to four percent risk. And that's basically
a direct quote from the New York Times um and
this is roughly equivalent to that of children of women
giving birth in their early forties. Right, we've all heard
(04:39):
that there's a higher risk of something going wrong with
the child if the if the mother's over forty. Apparently
that's the same risk you have if you have a
child with your cousin. Now, the mortality rate in that
two thousand two articles of a child of first cousins
was given as being four point four percentage points higher
than the child of unrelated parents, which us seem pretty high,
(05:00):
But more recent studies are suggesting that that's coming down,
that it might just be like three point five percent
points higher. Yeah, not only for this podcast, I think
we're going to need to put on our science lab coats, okay,
because we're gonna have to talk about talk about genetics,
talk about some science stuff. Because when we're talking about
the risks of inbreeding, which you know, cousin cousin love.
(05:24):
It's in breeding, folks. Uh. The thing that is going
to determine whether or not we're gonna have some sort
of crazy defects has to go. It has to do
with Sounder effect and Founder effect is basically when the
you take the two genes from the two parents and
(05:45):
what happens when you combine them together in a genetic stewpot.
So in that genetic stewpot, what you want to minimize
our things called elital recessives. These are the things that
will eventually lead to neurodegenerative diseases. The you know, the
the variant genes that can pop up and rereak havoc
on a child. Now, if you start with a really
(06:07):
great bloodline, then the fact is that you're, you know,
you're minimizing your chance of their obsessives passing their way down.
The reason that inbreeding can make people nervous is that
if you know one parent has their recessive and one
parent doesn't because they're unrelated, then the chance that the
child will get their obsessive is minimized. Right. However, if
your cousin has their obsessive and you have their assessive,
(06:29):
then the child will likely have a recessive gene and
have higher risk for something down the line that can
compromise their health. And obviously the chances of that you
very closely related parents having the same recessive genes are
much higher because they're more genetically similar. And uh, it's
interesting that there's an article that we found in Discover
magazine talking about genetics and inbreeding and all of that,
(06:53):
and it points out that, um, the roths child kind
of dynasty that practiced in breeding didn't have a lot
of genetic defects that were passed on the line because
they had a healthy founder effect, like the two parents
who started had you know, healthy genes and it kind
of went down the line. There weren't all these weird
diseases that popped up later in life. But that's not
(07:15):
always the case. But the thing about um this now
is that with the rise of genetic testing, will all
be able to know what recessive genes we have. And
you know, you think back to the podcast we did
about how we'll have children in the future. I mean,
it's very possible that two cousins could get tested see that,
you know, neither the carrier for the recessive gene or
that one is and one isn't, and they'll know that's
(07:35):
a good match and that they could go ahead and
have a baby. Yeah, and maybe we should point out
on the pro side of cousin marriage. Uh Discovered points
out that there are three major reasons why why it's
it could be a good thing. First of all, you
have um a shared set of cultural values. All right,
there's a higher chance that your spouses are going to
(07:56):
be compatible because your family already family in family reunions
will just be like just coming over on a Saturday
games so easy. And then you have minimized the need
to break up family wealth as in the case of
the Rothschilds. And I think the DuPont family also practiced
in breeding at some point for for those purposes, to
(08:17):
keep the wealth and the family the money in the family. Yeah,
actually it was pre interesting. Discovered points out that what
the Rothschilds did was that um female descendants were cut
off from any sort of inheritance, so to get their
doe they had to marry their cousin. And you know,
Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin both married first cousins so
(08:38):
you know, it's it's looking good for cousins, so fluxka.
But you know it's not all it's not all love
and roses. Let's turn our attention to a community Bradford,
England where uh, it's very common for the Pakistani's who
lived there to marry their cousins. Yes, the majority of
this community can trace their origins all the way back
to a village in Kashmir and a lot of it's
(09:01):
a pretty common cultural practice for these people to you know,
to marry close cousins. But that's had negative health effects
over the years. Specifically, the BBC reports um that at
least of British Pakistani's are married to first cousins um.
And it's you know, it's pretty common among other South
(09:23):
Asian communities, in some Middle Eastern communities as well. Um.
But it says on the whole British Pakistani's are thirteen
times more likely to have children with genetic disorders and
the general population, and they account for just over three
percent of all births but have just under one third
of all British children with such illnesses. And they think
this is largely attributed to inbreeding. Right, So it basically
(09:47):
it's unpredictable. You can draw a good hand like the rothschild,
you can draw shoddy hand like the people on Bradford.
So that's sort of the genetic side of it. That's
a large part of why people oppose marriage between cousins.
So let's take a step back and say, if there's
you know, the genetic crap shoot as to how the
children will turn out, what are the other reasons for
(10:09):
objecting two cousins getting married? Um? The Bible says, it's okay,
there's no restriction in the Bible of marriage between cousins. Um.
But this is an argument that's come up before slippery slope. Yes,
if you let your you know, if you let two
cousins get married or all of a sudden, is a
daughter gonna want to marry a father? Is a brother
(10:31):
gonna want to marry a sister? That's when you start
to feel a little, a little ikey. But I think
this is a good time to point out the difference
between inbreeding and incests. A lot of times we kind
of lumps the two together because you know, obviously insists
is a form of inbreeding, but in nature, inbreeding can
(10:51):
have very positive results. This Discover article points out um
a study that was done by a biologist, William Shields
at the State University of New York UM looking at
the way that young birds will inbreed, but they will
avoid incests. They leave the nest and they move about
(11:13):
four or five home ranges away, not super far away,
so they're still going to be pretty closely related to
the birds that they end up mating with. However, they're
staying away from the other birds in their home ness.
So the thing is that if you're too familiar with
the people in your nest, be it birds or humans,
(11:34):
then um, then you won't want to marry them, but
you'll want someone who's kind of similar. And if you
think about it, our ancestors couldn't really move that far away.
They're like the birds, they can only go a few
nests over. And so Discover estimates that what like of
all marriages and history are between people who are as
closely related as second cousins. Yeah, and Patrick Bateson, who's
(11:54):
a professor of ethology at Cambridge UM, kind of argues
that you know, if you go too far outside of
your you know, genetic line, it can have unintended negative
results and He points to the example of the difference
of teeth and jaw size, like, if I, you know
I have I don't know how to describe my teeth.
(12:14):
But let's say I marry some lovely I have perfect
deep and if I marry someone with weird, scraggly d
and our kids might have kind of crazy jaws. That's
basically is a his argument. And and these days it
would be fine because our kid would just go get
braces and take care of it and whatever. But back
in the day when dentistry was very rudimentary, that would
(12:36):
not have been an option, and they would have had
all sorts of health problems because of that. And he
refers to this um in Nate drive. We have to
find mates that are kind of similar to ourselves as
something called assortive mating, which basically kind of down the
line is in breeding, very distant in breeding, but in
(12:58):
breeding nonetheless, So people who want to marry a cousin
claim that for them not to be allowed to do
so is some form of genetic discrimination that basically nature
and history has kind of led us to this sort
of mating. You find someone you're really compatible with, um
and that the odds of genetics are no more against
(13:19):
them than someone else. You know, we don't ban women
from over forty of having children. We don't ban people
with diseases that we know that can be passed on,
like Huntington's disease. We don't ban them from having children.
So why then should these couples be banned? Is there
is there a question? So I think that it's just
something to think about. I don't want to come down
pro cousin love or anti cousin love, um, but something
(13:40):
to think about. I also found a found it pretty interesting.
One of these articles pointed out that a lot of
these states prohibit cousins from getting married because of how
the children will turn out. Right, And then there are
a lot of people who make the argument that gay
people shouldn't get married because they can't have children, and
that is um, violating some of marriage. Why. I mean,
(14:02):
everyone's just so worried about children when people just want
to get married. Now, maybe Molly and this is a
revolutionary idea, is so spare with me? Okay, maybe the
problem is just marriage itself. Maybe to solve all of
these problems in one fell swoop, get rid of marriage. WHOA, yeah,
(14:24):
how about that? Some to ponder. Something to ponder so
let us know, is it's the is cousin love enough
to get rid of marriage altogether? I mean it would.
It would eliminate this issue of cousin love, gay marriage,
the high divorce rate, all of it just gone gone.
The more marriage. What we have to talk about, Uh, babies,
(14:47):
we still have babies, would have babies. Girls love to
talk about babies. Just kidding, um, So what do you
guys think? Should we get rid of marriage? Should we
marry our cousins? And if you are someone who is
married to a cousin, tell us your story. I am
very interested to hear this. Molly and I are very
open minded and non gunge mill, so don't be don't
be scared to share. And speaking of sharing, why don't
(15:10):
we share some listener mail. Let's so, Molly, I will
start off with a dad's point of view on Disney princesses.
And this comes from Mark and he has a five
year old daughter and he says, my daughter does love
to play dress up. We happen to have a sizeable
(15:32):
amount of princess paraphernalia around the house. I don't know
how that will evolve, but she seems, but she's been
into the fairy stuff for more than a year, and
I'm pretty sure she's on the young side of Disney's
target audience. I heard a report on NPR just after
the tinker Bell movie came out that Disney was trying
to provide an intermediate step for young girl's interest because
many five to eight year olds were getting interested in
high school musical that was driving the older kids away
(15:53):
from that and merchandise because it was uncool to like
the same things little kids liked. And he said that
it worked in his household, that he's watched the tinker
Bell movies many times, and he said, I have to
admit that disnease. Approach with the first tinker Bell movie
is a completely different from the classic princess movies. There's
no love and trist in the movie at all. She
has to navigate personal decisions and accept the consequences of
(16:15):
those decisions and find a new solution. This is a
very good and modern message. Personally, I hope to keep
her more interested in Pixar films like Wally Cars, Monsters, inc.
He seem to have a much more modern approach to
a child's development and much better morals than anything I've
seen from Disney in recent history. So thank you Mark.
All right, and I'll read one from trist To before
(16:36):
we close up the mailbag. She writes, growing up, I
was Cinderella, so I find discussion and controversy surrounding the
princesses to be very interesting. While I can understand where
people are coming from when they worry about the aesthetics
of the princesses, I get very frustrated when they try
to pin many of the body issues young girls face
on them. Now, don't get me wrong, I too get
frustrated with how teeny tiny these cartoon girls can be. However,
(16:56):
as a young woman who struggled with an e distorter,
I can tell you that it's those who are closest
to you who do the most damaged, not some animated
ideal in fairytale land. These women who fussed and clamorate
Disney for portraying damaging images need to look at their
own lives and see how they treat their bodies and
their daughters. I can tell you the exact moment my
body image issues started, and it was an off hand
comment for my mother. It was a wonderful parent and
(17:16):
never imagined she was saying anything so damaging. We read
a clothing store and I asked for a size eight
Geane instead of six, and she commented that I gained weight.
That was all it took. And the ensuing years of
being in the performing arts only exacerbated issues, as I
was repeately told my look wasn't right or that I
needed to drop a few pounds. I was a size
six at the time. But if a mother has a
(17:37):
balance accepting view of herself encourages a healthy self image
and a healthy life style and her family, that confidence
rubs off and allows her to take criticism and shrug
it off a lot easier. Your niece Kristen isn't going
to grow up thinking I wish I was as thin
as that snow white I'm going to go starve myself.
If all she remembers is you telling her how gorgus
she looked in that costume, Well it so wonderful. You
(17:57):
know you guys did more emails, please for us to read.
Our email is mom stuff at how stuff works dot com.
During the week, you should head on over to our blog.
It's called how to Stuff and you can find that
and lots of articles written by Molly and myself at
how stuff works dot com. For more on this and
(18:22):
thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house. Stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
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