Kissing Cousins - Television Tropes & Idioms

Yes, he's checking out his cousin's breasts.

George Michael: Cousins can bunk together. That’s why they call it “bunking cousins.”

Lindsay: They call it “kissing cousins.”

George Michael: We’re not kissing! That’s the point!

— Marta Complex, Arrested Development

Romantic/sexual relationships between cousins is a phenomenon that varies in its acceptance from culture to culture, as well as over time. It is widely accepted in many cultures today, including most of the industrialized world. The modern U.S. considers it completely taboo, so Hilarity Ensues at the very idea of it. As a result there are a lot of bad jokes about backwoods Appalachians being Kissing Cousins. Despite the taboo, cousin marriages are still legal in (most of) those same places, though of course it's not common.

For the most part, this isn't based on religion; the ancient Hebrew patriarchs like Isaac married his cousin, Rebekah and the biggest Christian denomination, the Catholic church, does allow even first cousins to marry if they ask for a dispensation. In most parts of the world, it's allowed for cousins to marry, not encouraged but still allowed.

One culture in which it was widely tabooed was medieval Europe, and that prohibition was not to prevent inbreeding but to force people to forge family bonds outside their close relatives; it extended to third cousins and included in-laws. In cultures that put a far higher value on family bonds and were far more violent than modern ones, this was an effort to mitigate warfare. Royal or noble families who needed to forge alliances to end feuds often needed a dispensation to marry — as, for instance, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.

This is also the case in China—in the historical period similar to feudal Europe, the noble are explicitly banned from marrying any person that can trace their paternal lineage to the same historical tribe. This is then extended to all people after the unification of the Chinese empire; people bearing the same surname cannot marry even they are not related at all.

The idea of sex between first cousins being incestuous might have to do with the rise of the science of genetics which might label such unions as inbreeding with the increased risk of having children with recessive trait diseases like hemophilia. Particularly in cultures where the first cousin is the preferred spouse, so that the couples' parents were also Kissing Cousins, and then their parents, etc. A recent study in Western Australia discovered that while the chances of defects do rise, the actual numbers aren't high at all (ex: a 4% chance of birth defects over a 2% chance)[1]

. Also note even that applies only to first cousins: anyone more distantly related are likely to be as genetically dissimilar as any two random individuals out of the population.

Expect some strong Values Dissonance as a result, both from media from other countries like Japan, or simply from the nineteenth century, where/when the taboo is non-existent or inverted. Scholarly debate on why some cultures would forbid cousins, or even specific types of cousins, to marry, while others ignore or even encourage it, rages on, and lies beyond the scope of this wiki.

When cultures insist that Royal Blood is necessary for a monarch's consort, expect Kissing Cousins. May be a short route to Royally Screwed Up.

It should be noted that the actual term "kissing cousins" means almost the opposite. It means they are distantly related, but there's enough distance to make a romantic relationship acceptable.

Brother Sister Incest and Parental Incest are more closely related tropes.