Can two parents with fair skin and blonde hair have a brown haired child with darker skin? Yes that is definitely possible. Not that common, but it does happen. If neither parent passes it to their child, then that child may very well end up with darker hair and skin than either parent.

So all in all the answer to your question is neither! Blonde hair, brown hair, blue eye, browns eyes … none of those traits are dominant or recessive as they are not due to a single gene.

As the population grows and people have babies, the genes for less melanin will become more common. That makes the link between lighter eyes, hair, and skin tighter. So that’s why you see people with blond hair typically have blue eyes!

If both parents have blue eyes, the children will have blue eyes. The brown eye form of the eye color gene (or allele) is dominant, whereas the blue eye allele is recessive.

The Truth About Dominant and Recessive Genes Each parent carries two alleles (gene variants) for hair color. Blonde hair is a recessive gene and brown hair is a dominant gene.

If one parent is redheaded and the other isn’t, the chances their child will have red hair is about 50 percent, though the shade of red may vary greatly. Lastly, if both parents are carriers of the gene variant but don’t have red hair, the child has about a 1 in 4 chance of having truly red hair.

Contrary to what many people assume, redheads did not originate in Scandinavia, Scotland or Ireland, but in central Asia. Their coloring is due to a mutation in the MC1R gene that fails to produce sun-protective, skin-darkening eumelanin and instead causes pale skin, freckles and red hair.

In Scotland, approximately 13% of the population are redheads, although 40% carry at least one mutation. The mutations in the MC1R gene imparts the hair and skin more pheomelanin than eumelanin, causing both red hair and freckles. Redheads have very fair skin, almost always lighter than non-redheads.

Key milestones in the development of your baby’s hair

Permanent eye color is not set until a baby is at least 9 months old, so wait until your child’s first birthday to determine what color they will be. Even then, sometimes you may find little surprises. Subtle color changes can still occur all the way up until about 3 years of age.

Although there are many different possibilities for the exact combination of genes your child could inherit, it all comes down to DNA. 1 And predicting your baby’s looks is not as easy as it seems. Most traits that babies inherit are the result of multiple genes working together to form their appearance.