Wondering what your baby will look after they finally get here is par for the course when you’re an expecting parent. While all physical traits are passed down through a complicated game of genetic chess, some are easier to predict than others. Predicting a baby's hair color is one characteristic where a relatively accurate, educated guess can be made.
Predicting Hair Color
For some, the big reveal will be pretty anticlimactic. Sure, you can always draw a genetic wildcard, but for the most part, if your entire family has one hair color, the odds suggest that your baby will come out with whatever the fam is rocking. It doesn’t take much to ripple the pond, though, which is where things like dominant and recessive genes, alleles, phenotypes, pigments, and blending come into play.
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To answer that, we’re going to need a mini-genetics lesson. Each of our parents contributes portions of their DNA via their chromosomes that then become our own genetic code. Not everything they pass along is expressed, but we still have the ability to pass these traits on to our children.
Eye and hair color is an example of how the dominant and recessive alleles you and your partner are carrying around can combine to create unique traits, like dark hair, dimples, blue eyes, or even a widow’s peak - even when these traits aren’t expressed by either parent.
That all said, predicting a baby’s hair color is more complex than a mini-genetics lesson can explain, partly because hair color can blend, and the final color can change as your child ages.
A Note on Pigments
It’s also worth mentioning pheomelanin and eumelanin, which are melanin pigments responsible for coloring black, brown, and red hair.
Pheomelanin is responsible for red tones in hair, as well as the skin, lips, and even freckles. Eumelanin gets broken down even further into brown eumelanin and black eumelanin - each of which are responsible for the corresponding shade of brown or black hair. People who only have a little brown eumelanin have blond hair.
If there's some sort of genetic mutation or defect of the genes that produce melanin, albinism - where little to no melanin is deposited in the hair, skin, or iris - can result. There are several forms with varying severity, affecting about 1 in 18-20,000 people in the US.
Again - all of this is being simplified for the sake of brevity, but you get the jist.
How Does Hair Color Get Passed Down
Keeping in mind that determining hair color isn’t quite this easy, in general, here’s how these common scenarios play out between our dominant and recessive hair color genes:
Black hair: Black hair is both the most common hair color worldwide, and is typically the dominant trait. It is non-blending with lighter colors, meaning if you or your partner have black hair, odds are your offspring will have black hair.
Brown hair: Being brunette allows for a little more flexibility, but this is based off what unexpressed alleles both parents are carrying around, and how many shades of brown there are. In a blonde-brunette pairing, there is a chance for a blonde child, though the odds are more in favor of a brunette child. In a brunette-brunette pairing, your offspring will likely have a shade of brown. In a black-brunette pairing, the child will likely have black hair, but could end up with a shade of brown. Helpful, right? Genetics are weird.
Blonde hair: Blonde is a recessive trait, and a blonde-blonde pairing would result in blonde offspring.
Red hair: Red hair is a whole different ball game and is classified as an “incomplete dominance,” meaning it’s neither dominant nor recessive. Instead, when a baby receives a red allele from a parent, it blends with whatever allele it receives from the other parent. So, if baby gets a red allele from Mom and a blonde allele from Dad, it will be strawberry blonde. If instead of blonde from Dad, it gets brown, the baby will be auburn. A true redhead is a rare bird. Embrace them as such.
This is really just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the point.
WHEW! See?! Complicated. Furthering the confusion, sometimes hair color changes as the baby ages. So what color hair will your baby have? You might have a pretty good idea, or you might be in for a pretty fun surprise. This prediction tool is really just a fun way to dream up the different color possibilities.
So how did our baby hair color predictor work for you and your family?
Let us know in the comments!
Also check out:
Baby Eye Color Predictor
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Generally, dark-hair chromosomes are more common. Children with two brown-haired alleles will have brown hair. Children with one brown-haired allele and one blonde-haired allele will present brown hair as well. Only those with two blonde-haired alleles will have blonde hair.
For example, the gene responsible for brown hair color is dominant, while the gene responsible for blonde hair color is recessive. This means that if one parent has the brown hair gene and the other parent has the blonde hair gene, the child is more likely to have brown hair.
While dark-haired parents tend to have dark-haired kids, hair color genetics is quite complex. Your hair color depends in part on how many genetic variants you inherit from both of your parents. If you have brown hair, your shade of brown depends on how many light and dark markers you inherit from your mom and dad.
A study found that many babies (both male and female) had darker hair for the first six months of life, and lighter hair between 9 months and 30 months of age. Then, after the age of 3, the subjects' hair became progressively darker until they turned 5.
If two brunette parents have a blond child, that means they had to have instructions for making blond hair hidden in their DNA. How could blond-making DNA be hiding in every cell of a brunette person's body without them growing any blond hair? The answer lies in understanding 'dominant' and 'recessive' features.
If your newborn's skin is bluish all over (cyanosis), however, let your physician know right away. If your skin is dark, you can expect that your newborn's will be lighter than yours at first. Newborns with fair skin may show some mottling, with blotches of reddish and whitish skin.
Females have “XX” chromosomes while men have “XY”. Research suggests that the most dominant hair loss gene is located on your X chromosome, which comes from your mother. However, this is just one contributor, and many other genetic factors that predispose hair loss aren't sex-linked at all.
Natural red hair is the rarest hair color in the world. A mere one to two percent of people are born with auburn hair. The prevalence is slightly higher in the northern and western fringes of Europe, especially the British Isles (mainly Ireland and Scotland), than in the rest of the world.
A condition is considered Y-linked if the altered gene that causes the disorder is located on the Y chromosome, one of the two sex chromosomes in each of a male's cells. Because only males have a Y chromosome, in Y-linked inheritance, a variant can only be passed from father to son.
While genetics play a significant role in determining eye color, other factors can also influence its inheritance. One such factor is parental eye color. The eye color of both parents can impact the likelihood of specific eye colors in their offspring.
Genetics: The primary reason for why your hair color changes over time lies in genetics. Blonde hair has less melanin, particularly eumelanin, compared to brown or black hair. As individuals age, their predetermined genetic programming can “order” an increase in melanin production which gradually darkens hair color.
The type and amount of melanin in hair is determined by many genes, although little is known about most of them. The best-studied hair-color gene in humans is called MC1R. This gene provides instructions for making a protein called the melanocortin 1 receptor, which is involved in the pathway that produces melanin.
For hair color, the theory goes: Each parent carries two alleles (gene variants) for hair color. Blonde hair is a recessive gene and brown hair is a dominant gene.
But, if they are different, then the dominant gene will take precedence. And, we know that brown hair genes dominate over blonde, redhead and other colours. That means that the only way to have blonde or red hair is to have two matching recessive genes.
The more color-producing cells a child has, and the more eumelanin those cells make, the darker their hair will be. If they have relatively few melanocytes that mostly manufacture eumelanin, you can expect light brown or blonde hair. And the more pheomelanin their cells produce, the redder their hair will be.
Curly hair is considered a “dominant” gene trait. Straight hair is considered “recessive.” To put that in simple terms, that means that if one parent gives you a curly-haired gene and the other parent gives you a straight-haired gene, you'll be born with curly hair.
Pregnancy is a journey filled with awe-inspiring milestones, each one a testament to the miracle of life. One such fascinating fact is that, despite the advanced technology of ultrasounds, it is not possible to determine the hair color or eye color of a developing baby.
For a child to be born with red hair (which IS a recessive gene), each parents must have 2 red alleles each. If say, the mother had one red allele and one brown, and it was the same for the father, then the child would be born with brown hair, because the brown gene is dominant.
Young babies are indeed capable of seeing colors, but their brains may not perceive them as clearly or vividly as older children and adults do. The first primary color your baby can see is red, and this happens a few weeks into life.
Initially, many infants are born with fine, silky hair, known as lanugo. This hair type often gives way to the baby's true hair texture within the first few months of life. Factors such as genetics play a crucial role in determining whether your baby will have straight, wavy, curly, or textured hair.
Introduction: My name is Gregorio Kreiger, I am a tender, brainy, enthusiastic, combative, agreeable, gentle, gentle person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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