Incest couple in Germany: what do people think?

Question

Sensible answers please. It makes me recoil, but how to define the moral and social unacceptability? The legal arguement put forward thus far does not seem to carry so much weight (that children may be born deformed), as the couple have already had four children - and the news broadcast did not cite any physical abnormalities. The couple say that they have kept having children because the state keeps taking them away.

Thank you all for your intelligent responses.

Answer 1

Not heard of it??

its more common than you think i believe.

Answer 2

I'd never thought of the religious aspect before, but that person might have a point.

From a biological perspective it seems most people have evolved to find genetically different partners most attractive and not to be attracted by their kin. Much of this seems to be by smell.

Obviously the reason why incest is not a good idea is because often inbreeding like this results in deformities and because any genetic diseases in the families will be passed on to the child in the full form. Often someone could survive only getting a gene from one parent as either the disease would not appear at all or would be weaker; but getting the gene from both parents can cause full blown versions of a disease and many are fatal in this form.

Over generations of inbreeding, with no new genes in the pool from outsiders, certain traits and problems would occur more and cause what biologists cause decreased fitness. So offspring would have lower survival rates and less chance of producing their own offsprint. Over very long times it is possible that selection would act to make sure only healthier ones survive and the fitness of the group would recover, but in the short term the effects of inbreeding would likely be so catastrophic that it would never get to the stage where recovery began.

An example of this aversion is in smell. People prefer the smell of people with a different immune system to them and avoid people who smell similar. If they mate with the different smell people their offspring are likely to be healthy, and are also likely to prefer the smell of people with a different immune system. Over long times this sort of biological aversion would be translated into cultural norms, which are eventually officialised in relgious or state laws.

It is probably sensible to have laws as because incest is within the family, it can be related to abuse. There was a case in the UK where a girl was made pregnant and had four children by her father, they all lived together in a horrible situation where the girl obviously had no power and was psychologically dominated by her father.

In individual cases however things could be different. These days foetus selection probably also means they can avoid the most damaged. For example, if a brother and sister have been apart all their lives and not known eachother but fall in love, it could be due to some faulty functioning of their smell recognition. If it then came about that they were related, then if the couple knew all the potential problems, perhaps people would accept them being together. I would be very wary of psychological or abuse problems in any other incestuous relationship.

Answer 3

Depending on how closely related they were, the children may or may not have deformities. However, if their children were to mary within the family, the risk would be increased. With each generation that intermarries, the risks of severe mental and physical handicaps are greatly increased so, as a general rule, it's not a good idea. Just look at the animal kingdom: in most mammal societies, on reaching breeding age, one sex (either males or females) will leave the family group in order to avoid inbreeding and the weakening of the gene pool.

Answer 4

The laws on incest were originally another invention of the Church to control the population. Historically, the Church has used its rituals to control people's lives from birth to death.
The purpose of prohibiting incest was to stop the natural relationship between brother and sister developing from an early age and thereby dispensing with the Church's involvement in the marriage ceremony.

If we put aside the Judea-Christian teachings that most in the West have been subjected to, it is quite natural for a brother and sister who already have a bond of affection to enjoy a sexual relationship in their early years. The relatively slow development of a physical relationship between a brother and sister would probably be a much better grounding in sex than most peoples early experiences.

Good luck to Patrick Stuebing and Susan Karolewski, I hope that they force Germany to change their laws in line with the trend in some other European countries.