The writer's recent articles are largely about romance, the article subheading includes "But the weirdest family role is a vital one.", followed by the photo of the boy paying attention to the girl the same age... So I was wondering whether this article was heading towards Les Cousins Dangereux.
Or country. I know in the Indian subcontinent and parts of Asia that it's commonplace, and to be honest, there is a very low chance of genetic abnormalities unless it's done continuously over generations.
It might be de jure illegal but I can tell you from personal experience that that law is not enforced in southern India, as I know many there who have done this and continue to do so. In fact, many movies even portray relationships between those first cousins, as if it were completely normal.
> In India, consanguineous marriage is seen mostly among first-cousins, and mostly practised in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka except Kerala. The National Family Health Survey found that consanguineous marriage was most common among Hindus (26.9%) followed by Sikhs (13.9%) and Muslims (12.7%), but only 2.3% for Christians.[39]
Arrested Development aside, I had a crush on a cousin as a little kid and as an adult, I would absolutely date and/or have sex with a cousin. I really don't see the issue as long as procreation is firmly off the table.
This is interesting to me. Did you grow up seeing your cousins often?
I saw most of my cousins at least once a week growing up, and even went to the same middle and high school as some of them—meaning I spent more time with them than I did my siblings.
As an adult, the idea of being romantic with one of them is as off-putting as the idea of doing it with a sibling. I wonder how much of that is from growing up together.
> The Westermarck effect, also known as reverse sexual imprinting, is a psychological hypothesis that states that people tend not to be attracted to peers with whom they lived with like siblings before the age of six. This hypothesis was first proposed by Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck in his book The History of Human Marriage (1891) as one explanation for the incest taboo.
