Incest...the numbers!

Not sure if incest is increasing or not but the rise of Genetic testing has apparently revealed that it is more common than people think . A professor doing research at the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: revealed that " one in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child."
I think it is less taboo as it's more commonly discussed anonymously on the internet and people are finding out that it's more common than imagined.
It's always gone on and if it's consensual that's between them , there's little enough love and compassion in the world as it is.

It's not less taboo. It's illegal in almost all cultures.

Psychologists and social workers in the 1980s believed the numbers were 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 10 boys were molested or raped by a member of their family, usually a father, step-father, uncle, or grandfather. 1% of perpetrators are women, usually single mothers. 99% are male and currently married. Ages of victims range from newborns to 15 years, but grooming most frequently starts between 4 and 6 years old, and the abuse continues until the child gets old enough to start acting out -- with a wide range of responses: withdrawal, depression, suicides, drug addiction, running away from home, delinquency, crimes.
In Japan, the ratios are reversed. Mothers whose husbands spend long hours away at work are the most likely to offer sex to their teenage sons. They try to jusitfy that it is "to keep them at home and focused on their schoolwork". The psychological damage to these boys is just as bad.

There are practical reasons why incest is psychologically damaging to the child, no matter whether the grooming is manipulative or coercive. It is rape because children do not experience adult desires and because they're not mature enough to know how to defend themselves.It predisposes the victim to a lifetime of low self-esteem, depression, and very often addiction and worse. On the physical level, male on female, there are the risks of pregnancy and babies with subnormal intelligence and genetic deformities.

The only difference now is that we do and should talk about it.
Perpetrators need to understand the serious and long-term damage they do.

Victims are learning that it is important to report their perpetrator to a responsible adult who will believe, support and help them.
Adult survivors are learning the value of talking about it to their therapists, if they can afford one.

The media are talking about it because of the terrible toll. There is no justification for harming a child in any way.

Also, regarding the attitude of people who haven't had incest experiences of their own:
I'm one of those people, and my view of incest is very positive. But I don't expect to represent the average person.
I've talked to a few people about incest in real life, without specifically trying to find like-minded people, and while also withholding my personal approval of incest. In my experience, people's private opinions about incest seem to diverge very much from their publically held opinions. In the few private real life talks that I've had, those people seemed to be pretty indifferent about incest, as long as it didn't concern them or their family. In a "not my problem" sort of way. And who knows how many of them are secretly aroused by the thought of incest.

Such numbers do exist, kinda. You can go on Pubmed or Jstor and look at a whole bunch of different studies on the subject, from reputable publications, some more broad, some more narrow. If you don't want to throw a bunch of money at them in order to get through the paywall, you can use libgen and pirate those research papers. I have done so. My conclusion is that the data leaves a lot to be desired.

Two main problems:
1 - Data quality - bias/lack of evidence/small sample sizes
The most dependable data comes from medical and criminal statistics. Those are based on hard, verifiable facts. Unfortunately, the medical and criminal fields only get involved when things go wrong. Hence our most dependable numbers are also heavily skewed. Quiet, happy incest couples, for whom everything goes right, never end up in crime/medical statistics.
On the other side we have surveys. And even when those are conducted by actual scientists, they leave a lot to be desired. You either have a very small sample size that additionaly also tends to focus on only a certain population (usually students in the vicinity of the institute conductiing the study), or if you have a larger sample size, then it's pretty much guarenteed that the researchers didn't bother to talk to each participant, and it's impossible to know if the information provided was actually truthful.

2 - Comparability.
So let's say you have two good datasets and you want to aggregate them. Chances are you can't. The problem here is that the numbers in those datasets often express very different things. What is counted as incest and what isn't can vary significantly from study to study. Some count step-relations, some don't. Some count only nuclear family incest, other count other constellations too, like cousins. Some homosexual incest, others don't. Some only count penetrative sex, some count even just intimate touching.

The unfortunate truth is that if you want to get a bigger picture, and not deceive yourself, you have to do a lot of reading. Generalised incest statistics are not to be trusted in my opinion. And even if you really go through the effort and read a bunch of stuff, you only get a notion of what's going on in the real world, and not a clear picture. As long as incest remains a taboo, we will never know the full truth.

Sex with a relative is in a way similar to where gay sex was until recently. Commonly going on but either illegal or immoral according to many people and governments. With no real reason for it to be forbidden. Multiple spouses is another one. Pay for sex another. Do it or don’t but governments should not restrict sexual freedom.

I dunno if all of you people replying to this are supportive of incest or if you oppose it.....but either way I just cant believe there is a discussion on SW about such a controversial topic with over 40 replies and it hasnt descended into some sort of unhinged shouting match. Its pretty rare!

I feel it is ok with consenting adults. But the circumstances that might cause it would be sexual starvation, or excessive cravings, in my opinion.

i love incest so much its always exciting no matter how many times we do it

I think it has always occurred more than what people think it is just discussed more openly now and there is less judgement

I don't know but I don't mind it

I don't have actual figures, but I think it would be hard to have realistic stats on that type of thing anyway. Incest is still so taboo, especially in America, so I think people who have embraced inter-family sexual relationships are less likely to speak openly about it or volunteer their experiences for the larger public. Speaking from experience though, I do think it is more common than most people realize. It's still taboo, but I know several families in which the parents were the primary way their kids learned about sex (my own family included). I actually think it's one of the most natural and bonding ways that adolescents can learn about sexuality and physical pleasure. My parents are very much free spirits so I'm lucky, but I know other families have had similar experiences (even though they would probably never reveal the nature of their private incestuous relationships to strangers or the larger public).