Cousin Marriage

In the US, the thought of marrying your first cousin is scandalous, and often illegal.

In the rest of the world, it's a very viable (maybe even desirable) marriage situation. The wedding I went to recently was between first cousins. The very nice woman named Mona that I met there was also married to her first cousin. In fact, I read that marriages between first cousins are between 25-33% of all marriages amongst Bahrainis.

Our nanny Theresa explained the situation with cousin marriage in Indian/Sri Lankan culture. She said you can marry your children to your opposite gendered sibling's children. So Theresa's children could marry her brother's children, but her children could not marry her sister's children.

I recently read that the risk of genetic issues causing problems for first cousin marriages is actually only 1-2% greater than non-related couples, a fact that I found very interesting, as that is presumably the justification for the illegality of cousin marriages in the US.

Anyway, I just thought that was very interesting....