Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
1–10 of 16 posts
Re: Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
#2This 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.
Re: Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
#3This 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.
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."
Re: Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
#4As 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?
Re: Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
#5This 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.
Re: Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
#6As 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?
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.
Re: Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
#7This 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.
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%.
Re: Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
#8This 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). T…
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.
Re: Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
#9As 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.
Re: Cousin Marriage Conundrum: The ancient practice discourages nation-building
#10This 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). T…
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.