FBD Marriage: Further Support for the Westermarck Hypothesis of the Incest Taboo?

Abstract

In the past decade, several reports, including data from Taiwan on the sim‐pua form of marriage, have provided evidence for the Westermarck Hypothesis, a heretofore unpopular explanation of the incest taboo. This theory states that intimate childhood association breeds sexual disinterest. A preliminary study of FBD marriage in Lebanon reveals similar support for Westermarck's theory. The Lebanese patrilateral parallel cousin marriages examined produced significantly fewer children and more divorces than nonpaternal first cousin unions. Given the quite disparate cultures from which this evidence comes, serious reconsideration of Westermarck's Hypothesis is suggested. [incest taboo, FBD marriage, Lebanon, Middle Eastern sexuality]

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 95 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.