All in the family: Attitudes towards cousin marriages among young dutch people from various ethnic groups

Abstract

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial purposes, provided the original author and source are credited, a link to the CC License is provided, and changes -if any -are indicated.© Abstract. The present research examined attitudes towards cousin marriages among young people from various ethnic groups living in The Netherlands. The sample consisted of 245 participants, with a mean age of 21, and included 107 Dutch, 69 Moroccans, and 69 Turks. The parents of the latter two groups came from countries where cousin marriages are accepted. Participants reported more negative than positive attitudes towards cousin marriage, and women reported more negative attitudes than did men. The main objection against marrying a cousin was that it is wrong for religious reasons, whereas the risk of genetic defects was considered less important. Moroccans had less negative attitudes than both the Dutch and the Turks, who did not differ from each other. Among Turks as well as among Moroccans, a more positive attitude towards cousin marriage was predicted independently by a preference for parental control of mate choice and religiosity. This was not the case among the Dutch. Discussion focuses upon the differences between Turks and Moroccans, on the role of parental control of mate choice and religiosity, and on the role of incest avoidance underlying attitudes towards cousin marriage.

Attitudes Towards Cousin Marriages: Findings Among Young People from Mexico

“…Consequently, women may be more sensitive to the potential disadvantages of cousin marriages than men. Indeed, in a study among young people from The Netherlands, women reported more negative attitudes towards cousin marriages than men did (Buunk 2017). We therefore expected similar sex differences in the present study.…”

“…Overall, the young people in this Mexican sample tended to have somewhat less negative attitudes towards cousin marriage than the Mexican adults from the same region (Buunk and Hoben 2013), but their responses were similar to those of young Dutch people from various ethnic groups, except that in the present sample, religious reasons were a more important objection and marrying someone with the same values a more relevant consideration (Buunk 2017). Overall however, the present findings suggest that attitudes towards cousin marriages in such diverse countries as Mexico and The Netherlands-where the law does not prohibit cousin marriage-do not differ in major ways.…”

“…In a recent study among young people in The Netherlands, it was found that, although overall attitudes towards cousin marriages were rather negative, Moroccan immigrants had considerably less negative (but not more positive) attitudes than both those with a Dutch or Turkish background, who did not differ from each other. The finding that Moroccans had a less negative attitude towards cousin marriage than the Dutch was expected on the basis of the well-documented prevalence of cousin marriages in many Arab countries mentioned above (Buunk 2017).…”

“…Attitudes Towards Cousin Marriage To assess these attitudes, the questionnaire used by Buunk (2017) was used. This questionnaire consists of 9 items, 4 of these express a possible negative and 5 of which express a possible positive consequence of marrying a cousin.…”

“…Resistance to Interethnic Mating This scale consisted of six items developed by Buunk (2017), based in part on the scale for intergroup mating competition developed by Klavina et al (2009). The items were answered on a five-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).…”