an extreme example of cousin decline

study authors project that 70 years from now, a 35-year-old woman in Canada will have just five living cousins, 75 per cent fewer than her 20th-century predecessor.

My father is descended from a line of exceptionally hardy Catholic women who were encouraged by their faith and enabled by their robust constitutions to multiply. As a result, he has around 140 first cousins.

The Industrial Revolution made labour more mobile. Rather than settling near their parents to farm the family land or apprentice at the family business, young adults began to move from place to place in search of employment