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Could Cousin Marriages Fix Falling Fertility Rates?
Malcolm reveals statistics showing couples who are third or fourth cousins have more kids and grandkids than other couples. He and Simone discuss the evolutionary rationale for "cross-cousin" marriage in small tribes, as well as the downsides of first-cousin inbreeding.
They cover research on actual genetic risks, which are lower than commonly assumed. The Catholic Church banning cousin marriages out to 17th cousins is highlighted as a way they disrupted inheritances. Inter-ethnic marriage benefits are also touched on.
The conversation gets into Western culture's taboo and fetishization around incest, effects like the Westermarck Effect, and how repulsion/attraction can sometimes get reversed. They debate whether future advancement could eliminate risks that block sibling marriages.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Some hot,
Malcolm Collins: hot stats. Some hot stats. Simone, one of the things that people always tease us for when
Simone Collins: they're looking at pictures.
Oh, I had a good intro for this. Can I do an intro? You can do the intro.
Would you like to know more?
Simone Collins: So Malcolm, you know how like, basically since we, we started working together and doing things together, people assumed that we were brother and sister. And so at parties, when I, you know, was introducing myself and you to people and you were on the other side of the room and they, they, You know, you weren't in the conversation and I was trying to point out where you were.
I would, I just gave up and started saying, Oh, you know, he's the guy who looks like he's my brother. And I went immediately knew who you were.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, and pictures online of us, whenever we go viral for this or that thing that we've done recently, one of the most common insults is, well, they look like they're a brother and sister.
Yeah. And It's funny because I think what they're actually seeing, because one of the things that we often point out is our sort of cultural slash ethnic group [00:01:00] used to be a very common ethnic group in this country and is now just a very, very rare one which is sort of the larger Calvinist cultural group and it's just not that common anymore and it what they're really noticing is just like, it's your first time meeting somebody who's like an Asian and they're weird and they're
Simone Collins: Asian.
Yeah, you look like you're related.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you look like you're related. Like, but if you go to like the town I'm from, because my family came from like a small offshoot of that group, but that had tons and tons of kids. So like every one of my family has over like three or four kids. And historically we go a few generations back.
What was it? 14 kids per generation?
Simone Collins: It's a lot. Yeah. They had a
Malcolm Collins: lot of kids, but yeah, if you go like rural area around Dallas, like everyone looks like me, you'll be like,
Simone Collins: even, even in Dallas, people look like they could be related to you. It's, it's a little bit creepy. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Just generic Texan. What makes somebody Texan?
But, but What I wanted to go into here on this [00:02:00] particular topic was a very interesting statistic I saw recently. Which brings up an interesting question, which is as pro natalist advocates, should we be promoting people marrying their cousins? Oh
Simone Collins: boy. Yeah. I mean, a very, some very, very high birthrate cultures do have
Malcolm Collins: a lot of, Simone, if you, I'm just going to give a quote here.
Okay. Okay. So this is a, a study that was done recently. It was couples who are third or fourth cousins ten
Published on 2 years ago