Expert: John Locke - 11/16/2008

Question
I am wondering how my baby's hair will be.

I have black straight hair and dark skin. Both my parents have black straight hair and olive skin (like philippinos). My maternal grandparents both have straight black hair. My maternal grandmother has olive skin and my maternal grandfather has dark skin. My paternal grandparents both have straight black hair. My paternal grandpa has olive skin also and my paternal grandma has dark skin.

My husband has curly black hair. His mom has straight black hair and has light olive skin and his dad has nappy hair and a dark complexion. His maternal grandparent both have straight black hair with very light olive skin and his paternal grand parents have curly black hair and dark skin.

I was just wondering if you can help me get an idea of what traits my baby is likely to receive.

Thank you so much for your help.
Diana  

Answer
Thanks for using AllExperts. The biology of skin, hair, and eye color is surprisingly complex, to the point that I am unable to give you a definite answer. However, given the prevalence of black hair in your immediate families, it seems likely that your child will have black hair. Even if your child does not, his hair color would be a dark shade of whatever color it actually is (we do know that hair shade and hair color seem to be controlled separately from each other). It is extremely difficult to say anything beyond that with certainty, given our current level of knowledge, I'm afraid. Skin color is similarly difficult, but again, the preponderance of dark complexions makes it likely that your child will have a skin tone that is dark and probably between yours and your husbands. If I had to speculate further, I'd say that your child's skin color would be more biased toward the darker range, given how many of your relatives have dark skin. As for eye color, I'll direct you to the websites below, but with a caveat: we have a pretty good understanding of how most eye colors are formed, but still cannot explain situations such as where blue-eyed parents give birth to a brown-eyed child.

http://seps.mgd-colo.peak.org/cvoracle/faq/eyecolor.html
http://museum.thetech.org/ugenetics/eyeCalc/eyecalculator.html


You may also be interested in this BBC article that describes some recent work in the area of genetics of eye color:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6195091.stm