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To do this we'll start with Ego, and then give Ego some first cousins
a cousin is just the offspring of two siblings - two or more siblings
so we all know that our cousins are the offspring of the siblings of our parents
so we'll give Ego a father, marry his father to a mother
and then we're going to give Ego's mother a sister
marked with a Z - and in kinship diagrams in anthropology the Z means sister
We're going to give that sister some children and we'll call those cousins
The reason why Ego is a square and so is the cousin is because gender is irrelevant
So I'm using the square to mark either gender We can also give the mother's brother - what
we would call an uncle - some offspring and those are also our first cousins
Remember that Z is sister We can sort these first cousins out by side
So the cousins on the father's side we call those patrilateral cousins
And the cousins on the mother's side are matrilateral cousins
We can make a finer distinction and this is a distinction between parallel
and cross we're gonna start with parallel cousins
Parallel cousins are simply offspring of siblings of the same gender
we mark those with two parallel lines So this means, assuming that your father has
siblings and that you mother has siblings - you have
two kinds of parallel cousins On the father's side you have patrilateral
parallel cousins and those are the children of your father's
brother or brothers On your mother's side you have matrilateral
parallel cousins and those are the children of your mother's sister or sisters
- and again we're marking these with squares because they could be either gender, gender
doesn't matter at the level of the children. When you're determining cross and parallel
you look at the siblings who are having children, not at the gender of the children
Cross cousins, on the other hand, are the offspring of opposite gender siblings, and
we mark those with an X Again, you have two kinds of cross siblings
or cross cousins. You have patrilateral cross cousins, those
are the offspring of your father's sister and we have matrilateral cross cousins those
are the offspring of your mother's brother So we have that marked FZC that's Father's
Sister's Children and MBC that's Mother's Brother's Children.
The cross in gender is in the parent's generation and again that's because cousins are the offspring
of siblings, so we have to look at the generation of Ego's parents to determine cross and parallel.
That's all that matters in terms of the gender, is the parent's gender.
We have patrilateral cross and parallel cousins and we have matrilateral cross and parallel
cousins. So this brings us to our big question: What
is a bilateral cross cousin? So somehow a bilateral cross cousin has to
be a cousin on both sides. How can that happen?
So we're going to do a thought experiment ...
Two sets of siblings are out wandering around in the desert, and they manage to bump into
one another. So we have green brother and sister, and a
second pair of siblings, red brother and sister. And they bump into each other, and they're
been wandering a long time, so they decide to immediately get married.
So green man marries red woman, and red man marries green woman.
... and this is where we can start to understand the meaning of a bilateral cross cousin
We do this by looking closely at their relationships through their parents.
We're going to call the offspring of green man and red woman W, the orange triangle,
who happens to be male, and fortunately the offspring of red triangle and green woman
K is female. So we'll start from K's perspective, and look
at the relationship between K and W. Y is K's mother, and X is the brother of her
mother. He's the mother's brother, and this means
W is the mother's brother's son, from the perspective of K.
That means, that from K's perspective, W is her matrilateral cross cousin.
We can also though look at her relationship to W through her father B
So B is K's father, and A is father's sister, and if we look at W from that perspective,
W is father's sister's son. That is to say, for K, he's also her patrilateral
cross cousin. So this mean's from both sides he's a cross
cousin to K, he's a mother's brother's son and a father's sister's son.
And this applies reciprocally. So if we look at it from the perspective of
W, then X is his father, and Y is his father's sister, so this means that, through that tie,
K is his father's sister's daughter. But if we look at the relationship between
W and K through W's mother marked A, A is his mom, B is his mother's brother, which
means that K, through his mother, is his mother's brother' daughter.
So again we find that she's a bilateral cross cousin to W
She's simultaneously the mother's brother's daughter and the father's sister's daughter
And they stand in that bilateral relation to each other. That makes them bilateral cross
cousins. Now, if they get married, this is what we
call a bilateral cross cousin marriage. That's when W marries K and they're bilateral
cross cousins to each other.