Mother and son in New Mexico face jail time for incestuous relationship

[CapnAwesome]

I was scanning some studies and for it to be a real problem you need a sizable population to be engaged in inbreeding, not just individuals. It could be a justification of that law, it's not hard to imagine a religious community that maintains inbreeding as a practice, considering all the small Christian (and other) cults that have had strange sexual practices in the US. A group of 100 starts inbreeding legally on a religious basis, and you are going to have children with defects. Without an inbreeding law, such communities would be legal. I don't think the legality of inbreeding real has much of an effect on people who want to fuck their siblings, parents or children on an individual level anyway.

No doubt -- laws aren't preventative, they're punitive. And I think you and I would agree that even if such a law did prevent these things, it still isn't the government's place to regulate this sort of thing; as others have pointed out, the gov't doesn't regulate other unions likely to produce birth defects.

But -- when I see the term "far more likely", I like to calibrate that judgement for myself. I know the logo behind the argument, but I want to see data that supports it.

So I poked around the internet for a bit and found a lone czech study on incest that shows that 1st degree incest (siblings or parent/child) results in almost 50% of children having a mental or physical deformity.

A group of genetic counselors reviewed the research on the biological consequences of sex between relatives (consanguineous relationships) (here). They found a surprisingly small increase (about 4 percent) in birth defects among the children of married cousins. Incest between first degree relatives, however, was a different story. The researchers examined four studies (including the Czech research) on the effects of first degree incest on the health of the offspring. Forty percent of the children were born with either autosomal recessive disorders, congenital physical malformations, or severe intellectual deficits. And another 14 percent of them had mild mental disabilities. In short, the odds that a newborn child who is the product of brother-sister or father-daughter incest will suffer an early death, a severe birth defect or some mental deficiently approaches 50 percent.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ani...lem-incest


Some of that is probably the result of generational incest though. So it's hard to say exactly what a lone case of incest like this one will do to a child. However I think you could still justify the law because of what groups or families of people could do, rather then individuals. A church group, say something like the Westboro baptist church or fundamentalist Mormons, could legally have incestuous relationships that fuck up generations of children if incest laws were repealed.  I'm not really sure personally how I feel about the law, other then incest is gross to the max. However I do see more to the law then just enforcing our inherent gross out factor on consenting adults.

[Little lunch]

It seems to me that the love you have for your children is a much deeper and stronger love then that you have for a partner.
I can't help but think that the feelings they had would have passed in time and they have consequently missed out on a precious opportunity.

[Thumpalumpacus]

No doubt -- laws aren't preventative, they're punitive. And I think you and I would agree that even if such a law did prevent these things, it still isn't the government's place to regulate this sort of thing; as others have pointed out, the gov't doesn't regulate other unions likely to produce birth defects.

But -- when I see the term "far more likely", I like to calibrate that judgement for myself. I know the logo behind the argument, but I want to see data that supports it.

So I poked around the internet for a bit and found a lone czech study on incest that shows that 1st degree incest (siblings or parent/child) results in almost 50% of children having a mental or physical deformity.

A group of genetic counselors reviewed the research on the biological consequences of sex between relatives (consanguineous relationships) (here). They found a surprisingly small increase (about 4 percent) in birth defects among the children of married cousins. Incest between first degree relatives, however, was a different story. The researchers examined four studies (including the Czech research) on the effects of first degree incest on the health of the offspring. Forty percent of the children were born with either autosomal recessive disorders, congenital physical malformations, or severe intellectual deficits. And another 14 percent of them had mild mental disabilities. In short, the odds that a newborn child who is the product of brother-sister or father-daughter incest will suffer an early death, a severe birth defect or some mental deficiently approaches 50 percent.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ani...lem-incest


Some of that is probably the result of generational incest though. So it's hard to say exactly what a lone case of incest like this one will do to a child. However I think you could still justify the law because of what groups or families of people could do, rather then individuals. A church group, say something like the Westboro baptist church or fundamentalist Mormons, could legally have incestuous relationships that fuck up generations of children if incest laws were repealed.  I'm not really sure personally how I feel about the law, other then incest is gross to the max. However I do see more to the law then just enforcing our inherent gross out factor on consenting adults.

I appreciate your detailed reply and the work which went into it. If their premises are sound, it would sure make a strong case for a law. But there's a couple of category errors built into that blog: on the one hand, it groups birth defects and "early deaths" together without defining the cause of early death, and on the other, it compares this conflated rate of defects and deaths to a 7% rate of defects-only, without mentioning early death at all in the control group:

of a study of Czechoslovakian children whose fathers were first degree relatives. Fewer than half of the children who were the product of incestuous unions were completely healthy. Forty-two percent of them were born with severe birth defects or suffered early death and another 11 percent were mildly mentally impaired. This study is particularly instructive as it included a unique control group — the offspring of the same mothers but whose fathers were not the mothers’ relatives. When the same women were impregnated by a non-relative, only 7 percent of their children were born with a birth defect (Figure 1).

Reading the supporting study, though, I'm certainly rethinking my position here.

I still don't think it's the government's business to regulate such interactions, especially if biology has already addressed the problem.

[Excited Penguin]

My view regarding incest is, I don't care about it as long as its between adults and they don't have kids.

'Cause yuk and ew is not an argument. It's a reaction. And we don't run society on those.

It's wrong because you're never supposed to have sex with your own children no matter what age they are.

You're supposed to raise them in a loving but none sexual way even when it's no longer a matter of it being paedophilia.

This is just my own moral outlook, I'm not arguing any legal consistencies.

I see it as a breech of trust and failed parenting on the biological parents behalf.

But that's your view. It's not everyone's view.

And while we're on the subject, I think society should move on from the traditional family model as well.

[c172]

To what (maybe that's a different thread)?

[Excited Penguin]

I have no idea, I only have a sort of a sketch in mind. I just think we'll get there eventually anyway, this is definitely not the best way to raise human beings.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I get that. But it is still just the "eww" argument, restated in dignified language.

I don't see how my argument only amounts to reactionary disgust.

I was talking about family values between parents and the people they gave birth to, disgust has nothing to do with it.

For all I know this woman could have been really good looking and the sex could have looked like something from a great porn film, not disgusting at all, but despite this I think that it's more than likely this kind of sexual relationship is a result of failed parenting somewhere along the line.

Why do you regard it as "immoral", if both parties are consenting adults?

The yuck-factor is enough for me to avoid incest, with no appeal to morality involved.

[Thumpalumpacus]

So then it may not be her fault at all but it is failed parenting if he didn't know her as a mother.

Not necessarily. What if she gave him up for adoption because she hadn't the means to provide for him? Is that "failed parenting", or a wise choice made by putting the child's needs first?

[paulpablo]

So then it may not be her fault at all but it is failed parenting if he didn't know her as a mother.

Not necessarily. What if she gave him up for adoption because she hadn't the means to provide for him? Is that "failed parenting", or a wise choice made by putting the child's needs first?

Failing to provide for your children is failed parenting, it might not necessarily be the persons fault, maybe failed parenting might be the wrong way to put it since there's no parenting involved, she decided to not be a parent possibly for valid reasons I don't know, then decided to have sex with her son.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Not necessarily. What if she gave him up for adoption because she hadn't the means to provide for him? Is that "failed parenting", or a wise choice made by putting the child's needs first?

Failing to provide for your children is failed parenting, it might not necessarily be the persons fault, maybe failed parenting might be the wrong way to put it since there's no parenting involved, she decided to not be a parent possibly for valid reasons I don't know, then decided to have sex with her son.

Yeah, I don't think "failed parenting" covers the possibilities when she's given the son up for adoption, because she wasn't in fact a parent. Being a parent goes beyond bloodlines; the parenting was done by the adopting parents, not the incestuous mother. She was at most an egg donor and incubator, right?

As Losty and others have pointed out, much of the incest taboo is not purely genetic -- or at least not triggered in that manner. It's triggered by close proximity in formative years, I think. When you're growing up, anyone in your household is so close to you that the idea of reducing the relationship to sex is abhorrent to most folk. That's only my own opinion, and I have *zero* data to back it up, so take it or leave it as it stands, we're cool.