On cousin marriage
Now the news is out that Graham Platner’s replacement, Troy Jackson, has a significant other (they’re not married) who is his second cousin and the mother of his two children:
Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson is in a long-term relationship with his high school sweetheart — who is also his second cousin, according to a new report.
Jackson, 58, and Lana Pelletier share two adult sons and the same great-grandparents, according to Thursday’s report by independent journalist Steve Robinson, who notes that such relationships are both legal under state law and not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region, near the Canadian border.
While Jackson, a onetime logger and the former president of the Maine State Senate, has described Pelletier as his wife in the past, locals tell Robinson the couple has never been legally married.
Where to begin?
It used to be that people living in what used to quaintly be called “sin” – that is, in quasi-marriage outside of wedlock – were not especially politically viable. Those days are long gone, so that’s not the issue here. The issue is what I’d call the “ick factor” of being sexually involved with one’s second cousin.
But it’s not illegal anywhere in the US, nor is there much evidence that it’s harmful in the genetic sense unless there’s a known specific hereditary disease carried by both cousins. Here’s why:
he chance that a baby is born with a birth defect or disability is between 2-3%. So, if a hundred people have babies, we would expect that 2 or 3 to be born with some sort of problem. Which of course means that 97 or 98 are fine.
At 3.5%, the risk is slightly higher for second cousins. Still, 96 or 97 out of a hundred babies are born without any major problems.What this all means is that while there is increased risk, it doesn’t really qualify as a “high chance.” Even first cousins at 5% aren’t that big of a risk.
Keep in mind though that these are average numbers. Like people who are not related, your actual risk depends on the genes you and your spouse have.
Note that the article about Jackson mentions that such marriages are “not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region, near the Canadian border.” Well, it’s confession time: not only are such marriages “not uncommon” on the paternal side of my own family, but first cousin marriages were also “not uncommon” among that crew. In fact, they were very common.
And they didn’t live anywhere near the north of Maine, either. They lived in Belarus.
I didn’t know very much about my own heritage until I did some genealogical research on my family about seven years ago. I found out a great many fascinating things (see this for a previous post of mine on finding a long-lost maternal relation). One of those things was that my father’s family, even at the level of my grandfather’s generation – not one of whom I ever met, including my grandfather – tended to marry their first cousins. In fact, I found that the same three surnames occurred over and over and over, so much so that the families were intertwined in a way that made it difficult for my newly-found second cousins and I to determine just how closely we were related. Were we second cousins? Double second cousins? Double first-cousins once-removed?
We finally gave up on figuring it out, but got a great many chuckles about all of us being the product of some sort of vast network of first-cousin marriage. I finally figured out something about that, though: since the families were also very large (my paternal grandfather was one of between ten and sixteen children, the first born in the 1840s and my grandfather born in the late 1860s), and this was a typical family size back then, they probably had something like over a hundred first cousins.
That’s a mighty big pool from which to choose. If they lived in the same or neighboring villages and cities, it would be a pretty convenient pool, too. Why not marry a cousin and keep it in the family?
There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of insanity or any especially dramatic genetic diseases, as far as I can tell. Oddness yes, and eccentricity. But I’m not sure that wouldn’t have been the case even without the cousin marriage. There’s a marked tendency to be good at math, and that’s about it. We don’t look like each other, either. And below the level of my grandparents, I knew very few of these relatives, but found a whole host of them – really nice people, by the way – through genetic testing. We tried to piece together what had estranged the families, and decided it had to do with a business they were in together that precipitated a falling-out.
In recent years, there’s not been a whiff of cousin marriage or even second-cousin marriage in the group. But I guess that what I think of Jackson’s arrangement – I’m basically indifferent to it and certainly not especially shocked by it – has at least something to do with this family history of mine.
However, I can’t stand Jackson’s politics. But that’s a separate issue.
I know there are different ways of saying it, but Personally, I think if you have common great grandparents that would make you third cousins.
Second cousins would be one of your parents first cousins. ( In relation to you)
Hence, Example : my mom’s first cousin is my second cousin and his son my third cousin. That’s the way we figure it.
My paternal grandparents were ” second cousins” as people are calling this. Or ” third cousins” as our family called it. And that wasn’t the first time those two family lines – the Bakers and the Lees – had crossed. So they were more than just third cousins. I have always joked that I’m my own cousin on that side of the family.
There is a cute young girl who bartends at one the music clubs I frequent. There is a long history of fishermen families in my community, and they are predominantly Italian with some Portuguese that migrated here a century or so ago.
Chatting with the bartender, she said she’s Italian and she grew up here. Then she said that when she approached dating age, her parents told her. Whatever you do, don’t date any Italian boys! Why, I asked? They felt that the odds were high that he could be a first or second cousin. Ok.
It occurs to me, that there could also be the concern that the accepted lineage may not be the correct genetic lineage.
Jon Baker:
Nope.
First cousins are the children of siblings. Therefore, first cousins share one set of grandparents.
The children of first cousins are second cousins to each other. And their children would be 3rd cousins to each other.
“Once removed” is, on the other hand, crossing generations. For example, the first cousin of one of your parents would be your first cousin once removed.
A lot of people use the terms incorrectly, however.
Let’s bring in Einstein. He ended up married to Elsa Einstein, his first cousin on the maternal side and second cousin on the paternal side. No children, but still a bit odd. Cousin marriage wasn’t all that rare. Grok:
Estimates for British aristocracy/landed gentry in the 19th century were higher than the general population (roughly 3.5–4.5% first-cousin in some calculations by George Darwin). Second-cousin marriages were even less remarkable in these circles.
Second cousin marriage in villages could get as high as 10%-30% before modern transportation arrived.
I agree with Neo. I stand second to none in my loathing of Jackson’s politics, but a second cousin marriage is not scandalous or even noteworthy in the slightest. It would be a mistake to make this a campaign issue. Anyway, the parents of the great American geneticist Sewall Wright were first cousins, so you never know.
Re: Muslim cousin marriage…
Is allowed by the Quran and off the charts:
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Rates of cousin marriage in the Middle East have been found to vary from 29% in Egypt to nearly 58% in Saudi Arabia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East
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Even first cousins at 5% aren’t that big of a risk.
But when there is systematic inbreeding for generations, I’d guess that percentage goes up.
Another reason I see Islam declining.
Off-topic, but have you seen this article from Sasha Stone? Another example of a person who changed.
https://www.sashastone.com/p/did-i-just-leave-a-cult
This seems like a distraction. I would stay on the this guy and every other Democrat leader in Maine was behind Platner just a few weeks ago even though they did know more than enough about him to not be.
I imagine the Collins campaign won’t be stupid enough to make Jacksons’ common-law marriage an issue. In relatively remote communities, this would be not uncommon, and, as Neo says, the genetic risks are not high, even for first cousin marriage. That risk rises, as huxley points out, when first cousins marry each other generation after generation.
Neo has it right about who is a first cousin, second cousin, and the “removed.” My cousin who is an orthodox Jewish convert in Israel is my second cousin; his mother was my father’s first cousin and my first cousin once removed.
It was a running family joke that my parents shared a common ancestor back 3 generations,, in my research found it to be so,, and several other times the lines crossed back to North Ga. , upstate New York,, Germany,,
So I have an excuse,,,,
As Huxley noted, first-cousin marriage is common in Muslim countries, and among Muslim immigrants to Europe and the US. This is generally first-cousin marriage on the father’s side. For example, a couple’s daughter’s marriage would be arranged with her father’s brother’s son. Over time, this pattern is prone to genetic disorders.
When I worked in Qatar, Cornell Medical College had a large research program studying the genetics of such disorders. Second-cousin marriage isn’t similarly a source of high rates of genetic disorders, diseases, and defects.
During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church was very effective in slowly banning cousin marriage in Europe. This had generally positive effects on health, society, law, economics, politics, and science. Many of these effects were inadvertent. At the time, the Church believed that banning cousin marriage would solidify the authority and power of the Church itself. Beyond that, the ban had the effect of loosening the power of extended families, opening up social interactions, and increasing all kinds of contacts with strangers. In every sense of the word, the culture became less incestuous, less tribal, more open. Muslim societies have never made that leap. This is one of the reasons that asimilation of Muslim immigrants is so difficult.
Many years ago, in an historigraphy class, an anthropology professor gave a guest lecture. Afterwards, I asked him what most distinguished anthropology from history, as an academic discipline. (Naive quesion, but I was just eighteen.) Anyway, he said that the biggest difference is that anthropologists were almost always very interested in kinship structures and their effects on society, but that historians rarely gave it a second thought. This is still an open field of research for historians of Europe and the Middle East. What about Maine? I’m not so sure.
The second cousin marriage doesn’t bother me at all, and if Collins is smart she won’t bring it up, and risk offending a whole bunch of people. She only has to highlight his political views and his violent temper to win. But if she’s sly, every time Jackson’s picture is used in one of her ads, it should be accompanied by banjo music.
huxsley said: Re: Muslim cousin marriage…
Is allowed by the Quran and off the charts: Rates of cousin marriage in the Middle East have been found to vary from 29% in Egypt to nearly 58% in Saudi Arabia.
So important question; When Mohammed sets of his bomb belt and goes directly to Paradise does he get 72 cousins as virgins or maybe a few unfamiliar girls from far away. Can he request cousins or are they assigned?
Asking for my friend Abdullah, the Bomb Belt Maker
…And it can really mess up one’s family tree…
Cornflour:
Good stuff!
As others have already pointed out, first cousin or second cousin marriage done the first time does not result in a significantly greater occurrence of genetic defects. Genetic defects increase with repeated cousin marriages over generations. One of the most significant example of this is Habsburg inbreeding, such as the Hapsburg jaw. It isn’t just the jaw. Carlos II of Spain, a.k.a. El Hechizado (The Bewitched) was a genetic disaster.
Cornflour brings up an excellent point about the prohibition on marriage of first cousins resulting in the breakdown of tribalism, with benefits for the whole society. Muslim societies are heavily tribal.
I know there are different ways of saying it, but Personally, I think if you have common great grandparents that would make you third cousins.
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If you’re in the same generation, common grandparents make you 1st cousins, common great-grand parents 2d cousins, common great-great grandparents 3d cousins.
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That a 58 year old public officials with children cannot be bothered to actually marry the mother of those children is an indicator of general seediness. That she’s his 2d cousin is vaguely amusing, not an issue.
At least in rural communities, pre-train 2nd cousin (i.e. sharing a great grandparent) is not uncommon. I spent some time mucking with family genealogy. I come from a small coastal town in Connecticut where a single family (the Kelseys) were a large part of the original settlers. This is because William Kelsey and his spouse were 1) prolific, with something like 13 children (not wholly uncommon if married at 16-20 like most young women and having children every 18 months or so) 2) had most of their children survive to adulthood and themselves have families, There are at least 2 times that someone named Kelsey marries another Kelsey in my ancestry. One was clear second cousins. The other is slightly more dubious, being either a first cousin once removed or an out-and-out first cousin (unclear, lots of name reuse amongst both male and female members, so combined with limited records the precise relationship can not be pinned down).
A major cause of this was the pool of marriageable persons was limited to mostly 3-4 local towns in walking or riding distance, and people didn’t move (in or out) much. Also, you’d often be in contact as family gatherings of cousins and church attendance would bring together hordes of eligible young 2nd cousins and 1st cousins once removed that would then meet. Certain parts of New England still have fairly static small populations, and so again relationships form from the people you know.
As noted by ArtDeco that they have not bothered to marry is a far more interesting comment on the relationship.
With trans marriage, Planned Parenthood, friends with “benefits”, etc, the Mariana Trench is the limit. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #AllsFairInLustAndAbortion #Whatever
About twenty years ago, when my older granddaughter had just been born, we were visiting her in the hospital. Went out of the room while some medical thing was being done and while in the hall talked to a nurse.
She said there’s an ethnic group which has a high rate of birth defects and just leaves the kids there. She seemed upset and then changed the subject, from which I presumed she’d seen yet another example of what happened not infrequently and was temporarily really upset, again. To be talking to an outsider. But then, I guess, got hold of herself.
Two possibilities came to mind, given the various ethnic types north of Detroit. Ashkenazi Jews have higher than normal rates of difficulties uut they are usuall y within the brain and don’t manifest until some time after leaving the hospital. Lots of middle eastern types with high rates of consanwathamacallit. And the resulting defects obvious at birth. I didn’t ask which group and am glad I didn’t ask what about the kids. But if it’s enough an issue to get an experienced nurse so upset that she starts taking to a stranger about it, it’s both serious and been around a while.
There was an important study on the novel prohibition on cousin marriages by the Church in Western Europe with nearly 100 authors (from geneticists to theologians)!’, in a summary article published by Science on November 7, 2019. It caught my attention before Covid19 entered the scene in the weeks and months and years later.
Entitled, “How the early Christian church gave birth to today’s WEIRD [Western] Europeans; Centuries-old incest ban made Westerners more independent and trusting of strangers, study argues.” https://www.science.org/content/article/how-early-christian-church-gave-birth-today-s-weird-europeans
WEIRD is an acronym to define the ways the West gained outsider and exceptional status through unusual traits over the past Millenium. WEIRD being Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratically ruled. (SEE Joseph Henrich book, The WEIRDest People in The World”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_World)
“The church’s early [6th C] ban on incest and cousin marriage, the researchers say, weakened the tight kinship structures that had previously defined European populations, fostering new streaks of independence, nonconformity, and a willingness to work with strangers. And as the church’s influence spread, those qualities blossomed into a suite of psychological traits common today across Western industrialized nations, they argue.” And these traits are substantially heritable, ie, passed on by genes.
But practical enforcement of the ban awaited the Medieval rise of Manorial estates. These were land-holding Western European farms. These were mostly lacking in Eastern Europe, and thus the Church lacked any similar means to enforce the ban there. Even today, National IQs are measurably higher in the West, 100+, whereas in Czech Republic, for example, it is 97 – in fact, lower throughout Eastern Europe.
The Church actively proscribed cousin marriage, stating that they would no longer be recognized by the authorities, affecting inheritance. And therefore carrying on a family estate to the next generation would not occur if cousin marriage occurred. The upper crust bore the weight of conforming to this demand, and it filtered down to the lower non-literate classes.
MORE EXCERPTS and SOME CONCLUSIONS
“Before the Middle Ages, Europe was similar to other agrarian societies around the world: Extended kin networks were the glue that held everything together. Growing crops and protecting land required cooperation, and marrying cousins was an easy way to get it, explains Harvard University anthropologist and study co-author Joseph Henrich. Cousin marriages were even actively promoted in some societies because they kept wealth concentrated in powerful families.”
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“The new regulations prohibited people from marrying their first and second cousins and banned the practice of levirate marriage, in which a widow must marry her dead husband’s brother. “That part of a wedding where the officiant asks, ‘Does anybody here have any objections?’ goes back to the church asking, ‘Does anybody here know if these people are cousins?'” Henrich says.
“Centuries living under these restrictions fundamentally reshaped European societies’ kinship structure—and their psychology, the authors say. Traditional kin networks stressed the moral value of obeying one’s elders, for example. But when the church forced people to marry outside this network, traditional values broke down, allowing new ones to pop up: individualism, nonconformity, and less bias toward one’s in-group.
“’These are things that don’t come to mind when you think about the influence of the Catholic Church,’ Stich says, which may explain why nobody had previously connected the church’s influence with the emergence Western psychology.
“Working under the assumption that more time spent under church rule would ingrain those values more deeply, the researchers compared psychological and kinship traits of modern populations with the time their ancestors spent under Roman Catholic rule. The researchers built a vast database from historical records of church exposure in every nation on Earth, beginning in the first century and ending in 1500 C.E., when European society had become nearly fully Christianized.
“Next, they consulted anthropological data to assign a kinship intensity score to each of the world’s major ethnolinguistic groups. This score was based on historical rates of cousin marriage, polygamy, and other factors. Finally, they drew on dozens of studies that used established psychological measures such as the World Values Survey to determine modern population-level scores for traits such as individualism, creativity, nonconformity, obedience, and ingroup/outgroup trust. (Two of the more unorthodox measures of obedience and outgroup trust, for example, were unpaid parking tickets issued to United Nations diplomats and participation in blood donation drives. [WEIRD’s were found to be mostly law abiding; the non-WEIRD were almost routinely flouting the law])
“Plotting these points together, they found that the longer a population spent under the rule of the Roman Catholic Church, the lower its kinship intensity score, meaning lower rates of cousin marriage and polygamy and looser familial and clan structures. And as kinship intensity drops off in their data, a certain suite of traits grows stronger, including individualism, nonconformity, and willingness to trust and help strangers, the researchers report today in Science.
“This constellation of traits lines up with the dominant psychological profile of people living in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries—what Henrich and others have labeled WEIRD societies. The upshot, Henrich says, is that the church’s prohibitions against marrying close relatives weakened Europe’s traditional kinship networks and inadvertently replaced them with something very close to modern Western civilization’s cultural customs and norms. It also reinforces the notion that studying the behavior of people in WEIRD countries is not the same thing as studying human behavior more broadly, Henrich adds.”
This comprehensive and probing study pans out narrower conclusions in evolutionary psychology such as by economic historian Gregory Clark, “Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World,” 2007. His research backs the comparative history about the Industrial Revolution, answering that it arrived first in Great Britain because positive genetics flows from the rich had penetrated the lower classes. Thus, the UKs labor pool was more competent and trainable in operating machines, and Egyptians — even with similar financing and machines — were not.
This science mag study builds on human behavioral genetics that began in the 1960s. John Hajnal identified and mapped a unique in the world boundary line around a collection of nations where late marriage was the norm — thus allowing time for young men to build skills and acquire yeomen capital resources before marriage. And also, a unique residual of never marrying females — a fact of living in a WEIRD world that I’m sure was important is generating a feminist women’s movement of radical egalitarianism — something bizarre if not unthinkable in the non-WEIRD world. (SEE his map here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern)
The Hajnal map is also coherent with maps on leading Western nations by Charles Murray in explaining the geography of modern Western “Human Accomplishment.” (SEE map here, https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HnkCes0yDw4/maxresdefault.jpg)
In short, evolutionary and behavioral psychology confirm unique human combinations creating Western European exceptionalism. And preventing genetically close and reproducing marriages was one essential core element.
I’ve heard it said–no idea personally–that Muslim nations lack the “intelligent middle”. They have the really smart people on top, huge proportions of not-so-smart on the bottom, but few of the intelligent middle folks who keep things running and solve the bulk of the problems which crop up endlessly. Wonder if there’s a connection.
@Gringo:Carlos II of Spain, a.k.a. El Hechizado (The Bewitched) was a genetic disaster.
It’s an interesting exercise to trace his family tree. Not just repeated cousin marriages, but repeated uncle-niece marriages. Some of the uncle-niece pairs are also cousins. The same people show up over and over again at different generations. For example Holy Roman Emperor Charles V is his great-grandfather and great-great grandfather.
Niketas Choniates
For a musical example of a complicated family tree, consider I’m My Own Grandpa- Ray Stevens ( with family tree diagram). The song has been around for decades. It was an oldie when Ray Stevens covered it. Willie Nelson has covered it. But Ray has the diagram.
Lyrics
What exactly is Tucker Carlson’s lineage? Just asking questions?
I’m three-eighths French Canadian, going back to the very first settlers. (Mayflower? Johnny come latelys) And I am my own cousin several times over. Something like fifth or eighth cousin, but cousin.
*The Knight, the Priest And the Lady* by George Duby.
The openly stated reason for the medieval Church’s prohibition was to force people to enter into new relationships, which was conductive to peace. That goes back to Saint Augustine, who regarded it as the use of incest prohibitions.
What you DON’T want to do is have kids with your double-first-cousin. Here’s a Hapsburg example. Don Carlos was not the most stable of princes, and this may be why. Only four great-grandparents!
https://www.reddit.com/r/UsefulCharts/comments/13139sn/carlos_prince_of_asturias_had_only_four/#lightbox
BTW I have lots of double-first cousins in my family tree–two brothers of one family married two sisters of another family and both couples had lots of kids and lived in the same small town. Luckily none of the cousins married each other! Good thing they weren’t 16th-century Spanish royalty.
I am reminded of the old you might be a redneck joke.
“You might be a redneck if you think a family reunion is a good place to meet girls.”
Related…well, sorta…
https://tinyurl.com/yrp3hb5j
An interesting post about why the Catholic Church has been so successful for so long, and what business can learn from it:
https://xaretinak.substack.com/p/the-firm-that-sold-eternity-why-the
In response to Ms Catelli I had an odd happenstance. My wife’s younger sister married a gentleman who is also a descendant of the Kelsey family I mentioned in my other comment (and his name is a variant spelling) that had moved to Maine (then Massachusetts) shortly after the US revolution. He is a 6th (or perhaps 7th?) cousin and my nephew and nieces are also 6th cousins once removed to me and first and 7th cousins to my daughters. 3rd cousin plus relationships are very common across New England with anyone that traces back to any of the founding colonies (Plymouth Boston Salem, New Haven, Saybrook Madison/Hammonasset, Portsmouth) because the original base of survivors from many of those colonies is so small and they traded folks via shipping.
I can neither confirm nor deny that in my extended family two second cousins got married and had two children. His grandmother (my great aunt) and her grandmother (also mine) were sisters. According to the internet the definition of “second cousins” is you share the same great-grandparents but *not* the same parents (one extremely hopes not) nor grandparents (one hopes not).
Is it illegal? No. Does it carry genetic risk? The internet says no. I confess thinking it was rather weird. Probably because I tend to view second cousins as cousins. What are we? European royalty???
@Rick67:Probably because I tend to view second cousins as cousins.
The way families work nowadays, with so many divorces or not even being married and so many people moving away from their relatives for work or whatever, a lot of people probably have no idea who their second cousins even are.
Don Carlos was not the most stable of princes, and this may be why. Only four great-grandparents!
There was a play “Don Carlos” by Schiller based on his life, and a wonderful opera by Verdi. Both are more faithful to the legend than the actual history. I haven’t read the play, but in the opera Don Carlo is more of a whiny loser with parental issues than a complete psychopath. His father, the king, has him killed (maybe, the end is ambiguous) for disloyalty.
As noted, European royalty was full of cousin marriages, with some not so good results, such as hemophilia via Queen Victoria. It was also not so unusual in prewar generations in smaller demographics such as Jews. Both my wife and I have (I think second) cousin marriages in our trees, but not in our direct line. I remember being puzzled that my mother’s first cousin (by her mother’s sister) had the same last name as my grandmother’s maiden name, until it was explained that her mother had married a cousin.
Be interesting to know, in the European dance of royal cousins, how many impregnations were from…you should excuse the term…”outside”. Perhaps things could have been worse….. Maybe there was a kind of underground…hum…about certain arrangements,
I once attended a Christmas Eve Mass in Guatemala. I am not a churchgoer and am also of Protestant background, but I found the church ceremony emotionally uplifting. (I do have an affinity for choral music, which the Roman Catholic ceremony often has in abundance.) I thought to myself that in two thousand years, the Roman Catholic church has learned how to put on a show. The church was fairly new, almost Protestant in its austerity, so the effect would have been even greater had the mass been in a colonial era church.
@Gringo: I thought to myself that in two thousand years, the Roman Catholic church has learned how to put on a show.
Amen!
I’m not really a Catholic anymore (though the Church won’t let me change that), but I would agree that the Mass is a thing of beauty and the RCC missed a bet when they dropped the Latin.
I’m not really a Catholic anymore (though the Church won’t let me change that), but I would agree that the Mass is a thing of beauty and the RCC missed a bet when they dropped the Latin.
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The departure of the ancient tongue is regrettable, but there is so much else wrong: the music which sounds like leftover scores from the Hallmark Channel, the mobs of eucharistic ministers, half-assed homilies, the touchy-feely ‘saying of the peace’, the prayers for last month’s headlines, the tedious ‘announcements’, the commotion after the recessional, everyone in informal garb. Every once in a while you run into a parish which is more dignified, but what I’ve described is about 85% of the late morning services offered. They usually dispense with music at the other services.
I note that second cousin marriages do greatly decrease the risk, but you don’t want them forever, either. The Amish do so many that one researcher found that a slew of second cousin marriages, many double second cousin, several triple second cousin, and one quadruple second cousin — and they are having inbreeding problems.