Expert: Florence M Rollwagen - 12/29/2008

Question
hi my name is tiffany. me and my husband are trying to have children. however im slightly concerned with one thing. when i was younger i was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. will these things be passed on?
and one more question. i have hazel eyes and my husband has one brown eye and one green eye. what could the eye color of our child be? i have looked at charts but none of them have anything about someone with two different colored eyes.
thankyou

Answer
Hi Tiffany: Thanks for your question.

Inheritance patterns for many conditions have not been worked out.  Most of the time, this is because multiple genes are involved.  Eye color, for example, is controlled by as many as six alleles (http://www.dna-bioscience.co.uk/did_you_know_eye.shtml).

In general, if your parents and your husband's parents have blue eyes (or different color eyes, for that matter) the trait will be more likely to be inherited in your children.

As for the two eye color situation, this condition is known as heterochromia and can result from genetics or injury.   Assuming it is genetic in your husband what eye colors do his parents have?  That will increase the likelihood that your children will inherit that, too.  Here's a reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_color

As for anxiety disorder, yes, that is inherited too, but with even more complex genetics that eye color.  

In general, my advice is to look as far back in your ancestry (and your husband's) to determine how many people have these traits.  The higher the incidence, the more likely it is that your children will inherit.  Don't forget, though that it's essentially a random process as to which traits are inherited.  

To illustrate this, just do a heads/tails coin toss.  If you toss one coin, the chances of getting heads is 50%.  If you toss two coins, the chances of getting two heads is 25%.  So the more coins you toss, the likelihood of getting all heads or all tails decreases.  So for eye color, for example, tossing 6 coins and getting all heads is 0.6% for each parent.  Anxiety will be even more complicated.

Hope this helps.

FM Rollwagen, PhD