Keeping it in the family

"I'm in love with my grandson, and we're having a baby!"

I . . . I don't know what to think, honestly. So I did the responsible thing and decided to post it on a forum full of snarkers.

Quote :

Pearl Carter is positively glowing with joy. She has a handsome new boyfriend, is enjoying an active sex life after many years of celibacy and, amazingly, is preparing to become a mother again.

But the retired grandmother isn't carrying the baby herself. She and her young lover have spent a staggering $54,000 hiring a surrogate to help them with their dreams of having a child.

What makes Pearl's decision to become a mum again even more shocking is that her new boyfriend is her biological grandson, 26-year-old Phil Bailey.

Which means that her new baby is going to be both her daughter and her great-grandchild. This is the kind of thing that makes me think of the Hapsburgs (and we all know how well those guys turned out).

Pearl got pregnant at eighteen, but her parents made her give the baby up for adoption. She was never able to find her daughter Lynette, but after Lynette died from cancer, Pearl's grandson Phil began looking for his biological family.

Quote :

When Phil phoned Pearl, the pair admits they were both rather nervous. Pearl told Phil about being forced to give up Lynette for adoption, and Phil told Pearl about his mum dying of cancer.

'We both cried but kept talking for three hours,' she says. 'When he emailed me a photo, I thought what a handsome and sexy man he was before pinching myself – he was my grandson!'

Confused, Pearl talked to a friend, who told her about an article she'd read on Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA), which occurs when close relatives meet as adults and are attracted to each other.

'I could now understand my feelings and realise they weren't wrong,' Pearl says.

In 2006, Phil met his grandmother for the first time.

'From the first moment that I saw him, I knew we would never have a grandmother-grandson relationship,' Pearl remembers happily. 'For the first time in years I felt sexually alive.'

I'm not entirely sure what creeps me out about this, to be honest. They seem like a fairly well-adjusted pair, and thought it through before deciding to have a baby. But close relatives having a baby is a dicey proposition--one of the reasons incest is taboo in nearly every culture.

What do you think, guys?

Oh. Oh dear. That's so very wrong.


Also, that girl will be her own grandmother.

Futurama, anyone?