Scientists give us some great advice about marriage…marry for genes!
Love is cool and all, but science is even cooler!
Let’s just assume that almost everyone would like to change something about themselves. Maybe some people wish to be taller and maybe some people wish to be smarter. Unfortunately, we most likely received these genes we dislike from our parents. If we marry someone with the same genes that we dislike, our children will also receive these genes. So if you are in the market for a future spouse it might be a great idea to compare genetics to rid your future family of those bad genes.
Genetics is pretty simple overall. If you have brown hair, and you marry someone with brown hair, you are most likely to have kids with brown hair. This is something that most of us learned about in elementary school. What they didn’t teach us, however, is that the more diverse our parent’s genes are from each other the taller and smarter we will be.
One of the biggest genetic studies our world has ever seen has discovered that the more distantly related parents are from each other the smarter and taller their children will be. There is a growing number of people that marry others from distant parts of the world, which is causing the overall height and intelligence to increase.
So why is this? When the father’s genes and the mother’s genes create a new sequence, if the parents are related (closely or distantly) the new sequence will have copied genes. Children that have genetics with copies were discovered to have lower abilities in four specific traits: height, lung capacity, general cognitive ability and educational attainment. Therefore, the more distant the parents, the less amount of copies will be created, and taller/smarter children will be created. So if you would like to have tall/smart children, you should try to marry someone whose family tree is orchards away from yours.
