The effect of social selection due to familial mental retardation on the marriage frequency of normal individuals

Abstract

This paper compares the marriage frequencies of normal individuals with or without mental retardates in their nuclear families for the different combinations of sex and parental and sib phenotypes. Multivariate analysis indicates that there is a difference in the marriage frequencies of normal individuals with and without retarded family members caused by social response to the trait. This response differs according to the sex of the normal individual, although the social factors underlying this sex difference are not clear.