How to Predict Your Baby’s Hair Color

When it comes to a baby’s hair color, parents start to guess as soon as they find out they have a child. They determine if the baby’s hair will resemble their mother’s or father’s. Even though you can get a good idea of what color your baby’s hair will be by looking in the mirror, many things affect the final color. This means that parents can only guess their baby’s hair color better than by chance.

Trying to Guess Hair Color

For some people, the big reveal won’t be that exciting. You can always get a genetic wild card, but if everyone in your family has the same hair color, the odds are that your baby will have the same hair color as the rest of the family. But it doesn’t take much to make a ripple in the pond. This is where things like dominant and recessive genes, alleles, phenotypes, pigments, and blending come into play.

How genes affect things

When a baby is conceived, its parents’ chromosomes give it both dominant and recessive genes. These genes make each baby unique. Even though it makes sense that a baby’s hair color would come from the dominant gene, it’s tough to find out what color hair a baby has.

Mom Loves Best says that the dominant genes have the best chance of determining a baby’s hair color, but there is always a chance that the hair color will come from the recessive genes in the end. This is why both Mom and Dad could have the recessive gene. The article says that when the genes are freed from the chromosomes and interact, they make each person unique.

So, most of the time, the dominant genes decide what color hair a baby will have. However, recessive genes can never be ruled out because there is always a chance that they will do so. So, the best that parents can hope is that their baby’s hair will be the color of the dominant gene. But you should be ready for any surprises that might come up on the day of delivery.

How is hair color handed down?

Keeping in mind that it’s not this pretty easy to figure out hair color, here are some common ways that our dominant and recessive hair color genes play out:

Black hair: Black hair is the most common hair color in the world, and it is usually the most common trait. It doesn’t mix with lighter colors, so if you or your partner have black hair, chances are your children will too.

Brown hair: Having brown hair gives you more freedom, but this depends on what alleles your parents don’t show and how many shades of brown there are. There is a chance that a blonde and a brunette will have a blonde child, but the odds are more in favor of a brunette child. If you have a brown-haired parent and a brown-haired parent, your child will likely have brown hair. If a black person and a brunette person have a child together, the child will probably have black hair, but it could also be a shade of brown. Good, right? Genes are strange.

Blonde hair: Blonde is a recessive trait, so if two blondes had children, the children would also be blonde.

Red hair: is a whole different story. Red hair is called an “incomplete dominant,” which means it is neither dominant nor recessive. Instead, if one parent gives a baby a red allele, it mixes with the allele it gets from the other parent. So, a baby will be strawberry blonde if it gets a red allele from mom and a blonde allele from dad. If dada turns out to be brown instead of blonde, the baby will be auburn. It’s hard to find a natural redhead. Accept them as they are. Even though this is just the tip of the iceberg, you get the idea.

WHEW! See?! Complicated. Adding to the confusion, a baby’s hair color can change as they age. So, what will your baby’s hair look like? You could have a great idea or be in for a pleasant surprise. This prediction idea is a fun way to think about all the possible colors.