Elvis Presley – "Kissin' Cousins" (1964)

Yes, we’re all cousins, that’s what I believe

Because we’re children of Adam and Eve

Advice columns are the gift that keeps on giving to bloggers who can’t think of anything interesting to write about.

Here’s a recent letter to advice columnist Judith Martin, whose “Miss Manners” column began to appear in the Washington Post in 1978 – just a few months after 2 or 3 lines moved to Our Nation’s Capital to live and work. 

Dear Miss Manners: Last July, one of my adult daughters died.  I placed the obituary in the Sunday paper, cross-referenced to my maiden name so my relatives would be sure to notice it.

With the pandemic, we did not have an open funeral.  But not one of my 29 second cousins on my father's side even sent a sympathy card, and only four of my 37 first cousins on my mother's side did so.

Now one of them has died, and I'm having mixed feelings about how to respond.  I did send a sympathy card.  But attend the funeral Mass?  Why should I?  They can't even send a sympathy card.  Why should I go out of my way for any of them?

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I thought had a lot of cousins, but I’m way behind the woman who wrote to Miss Manners.

My father was one of eight children – which was an unusually large family even a hundred years ago.

Those eight siblings had a total of 19 children.  One of the 19 is my sister, and one is me – which means that I have 17 first cousins on my father’s side.  

That seems like a lot – my kids have only six first cousins – but 17 pales in comparison to 37.

If the letter writer’s mother was one of eight children, each of her seven siblings would have had to have five-plus children to get the total number to 37.  

Even if she was one of ten children – a very large family indeed – her siblings would have had to average a little over four children apiece to reach 37.  (I have four children, and I don’t consider that to be out of the ordinary – but it would be a real statistical rarity for nine siblings to average four children each.)

Whatever the specific facts were, only a tiny percentage of people have that many first cousins on just their mother’s side .

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I wasn’t that close to any of my 17 first cousins on my father’s side when I was young – most of them lived hundreds of miles away from where I grew up.  I’ve established contact with a couple of them in recent years thanks to Facebook, and I would expect those few to reach out if I lost a family member.  But I wouldn’t be surprised or feel insulted if the others didn’t – for better or worse, we weren’t close as kids, and it’s doubtful that we’ll suddenly become close now that we are in our sixties and seventies.

Based on my experience, it’s no surprise that only four of the letter writer’s 37 first cousins sent sympathy cards when her daughter died.  Did her mother’s siblings remain in the same area where they grew up?  If not, their children – the first cousins – probably weren’t that close as children.  (That was the case with me and my first cousins on my father’s side.)  

The mere fact that there are so many of them probably makes it less likely that more than a few would be close to the letter writer.  For one thing, it would be surprising if most or all of them still lived in the same area where their grandparents lived – Americans are just too mobile for that to be probable.  

And even if most of them remained in the same area where they grandparents lived – which would be surprising – it’s almost impossible to remain close to 37 cousins.  (How would you even remember their names?)  

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My mother was an only child, so I don’t have any first cousins on her side.  

But her mother was the oldest of seven children, and my mother had a total of 11 first cousins.  Which means that I had 11 first cousins, once removed.

Because my mother was the oldest in her generation, most of her first cousins are closer to my age than to hers – so they always felt more like my cousins than hers.  (Two of them are exactly my age, and one is actually several years younger than I am.)

I grew up only a short drive from where all of my mother’s cousins lived, and I saw them regularly when I was a child.  Even though they are first cousins, once removed,  I knew them much better than the “pure” first cousins on my father’s side.

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I’m guessing that most or all of the 29 cousins the “Miss Manners” letter writer describes as second cousins on her father’s side are actually first cousins, once removed. 

Given my experience, it’s easy for me to imagine that her mother might have been an only child, and that – like me – she ended up with a number of first cousins, once removed, who were nowhere near her in age.  If that was the case, I understand why she was disappointed that none of them sent a sympathy card – although I wouldn’t expect her to still be close to more than a few of them.

If they were true second cousins, it’s a different story.  Second cousins are the grandchildren of siblings.  I can’t imagine that the letter writer really expected to hear from a significant number of second cousins, absent unusual circumstances.  

Even if the second cousins’ grandparents and their parents never moved away from where their great-grandparents lived, there would likely be a pretty big age spread between the younger and older second cousins, which probably means they didn’t spend a lot of time playing with each other when they were growing up. 

I’m not aware of any of my second cousins on my father’s side – I’m sure I had some, but I never met any of them, and couldn’t name a single one of them.  (My father’s father died long before I was born, and I know nothing about any of his mother’s siblings – assuming she had siblings.) 

While I know some of my second cousins on my mother’s side, most of them are closer in age to my children than they are to me.  So while I would expect to hear from their parents if a close family of mine died, I wouldn’t expect to hear from any of them.

Given that, I wouldn’t expect to hear from my second cousins in the situation described by the letter writer.

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It’s probably a mistake for me to make assumptions about the “Miss Manners” letter writer based solely on my relationship with my first and second cousins.

Consider my eleven first cousins, once removed, on my mother’s side – who are first cousins to one another.

They all grew up within ten miles of their grandparents’ home.  I know their families all went to the same church – they gathered most Sundays after church for dinner at their grandparents’ farm.  They probably attended the same schools.

All of them live within a hundred miles of each other today, and I think that most of their children – my second cousins – remain close by as well.   Like their parents, they may see each other often and have a much closer relationship with each other than I do with any of them.  (Remember, I not only lived some distance when I was growing up – meaning that I only saw them infrequently – but I was also much older than they were.)

If the “Miss Manners” letter writer was any of my second cousins other than me, she might have had good reason to be upset if none of her second cousins noted her daughter’s passing.

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In Matthew 22:35-40, Jesus responded to a trick question from – who else? – a lawyer who was trying to make him look bad:

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” 

If Jesus was able to sum up all the law and the prophets in just two fundamental commandments, far be it from 2 or 3 lines to go him one better and offer up three commandments.

But if there were a third 2 or 3 lines commandment, it would be “JUST LET IT GO!” – which would be my answer to the Miss Manners letter writer.  (I think that is essentially what Miss Manners told her.)

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Did you know that more than 10% of marriages in the world today are between first or second cousins?

First-cousin marriages are common in certain parts of the world (like the Middle East) but are legally prohibited in China and Korea.  (Korea prohibits marriages between second and third cousins as well.)

About half of the United States prohibit first-cousin marriages.  (Only a few states prohibit marriage between first cousins, once removed.)  

You might be surprised to learn that first-cousin marriages are illegal in Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, and West Virginia, but are legal in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York:

The practical reason for prohibiting cousin marriages is that children of first-cousin marriages have an increased risk of autosomal recessive genetic disorders (which include cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and Tay-Sachs disease).  Children of more distantly related cousins have less risk of these disorders, though still higher than the average population.

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Elvis wasn’t talking about a first cousin in today’s featured song – the object of his desire is a “distant” cousin, if you take Elvis’s word for it.  (Which I’m not sure I would do.)

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Two Elvises are not necessarily
 better than one!

Click here to listen to “Kissin’ Cousins,” which was released on the soundtrack of the 1964 movie of the same name, which starred Elvis as both a US Air Force officer and his hillbilly third cousin.

Click below to order the recording from Amazon: