Expert: Walter Hintz - 7/26/2010

Question
I've looked through some other answers to this question, but I haven't yet found anything that can give me an idea of how MY kids will turn out. I don't have any preferences per se, but I am quite curious. The situation is like this:

Me: wavy brown hair, brown eyes
My mother:  Straight bright red hair, hazel eyes
My father: Straight brown hair, dark brown eyes

My partner: Wavy blonde hair, blue eyes
His mother: same as him
His father: Curly red-blonde hair, blue eyes

Everyone I ask tells me that our kids will have my darker hair and eyes, because blonde/blue is recessive. However, my partner is of Scandinavian descent and an article I read mentioned that a dominant blonde gene has been found among people with Nordic origins. Is this true, and if so, what will the impact be if both my brown and his blonde hair genes are dominant? Also, the same article mentioned a study with mice where certain supplements during pregnancy changed the pups fur from white to brown. Has anything similar ever been observed in humans?

Please let me know what you think.

Regards,

Stephanie

Answer
 Hi Stephanie
It appears that your mother is carrying recessive genes which means that there is a 50/50 chance that your are also. If you are there is a 1 in 4 chance your child will. So the chance of a child with light pigmentation is either 1 in 4 or 1 in 8 depending on your genes