Is it possible for my future children to have blonde hair?

Question

I have dark brown hair. I was born with jet black hair but it became a light brown as a toddler then got to be a medium to dark brown as I got older. My father was blond as a child but got dark year later in life. My mother was blond as a child also and has dirty blond as an adult. My younger brother had very light blond hair as a child and how has a sandy blond color in his teenage years. So is blond hair somewhere in my genes? Could it be possibly to have blond haired children? Also, if I married a guy with sandy blond hair or knew that he was blond as a child woudl this increase my chances of having a blond haired child? Haha it is not my lifes mission to have a blond child or anything. I would be perfectly happy to have any colored child, as long as it is healthy, but I was just curious if blond is somewhere in my genes! Please help! And could someone explain if hair color is like eye color where you get two traits such as 1 brown, 1 blue, or is it much more complicated than that?

Answer 1

I think I read that blondes show up more often than what is predicted and science doesn't understand why so there may be things not yet understood about it. My friend and her husband both had black hair and their children blond.  I do think that you can have a blond but I think it will end up like your brother and darken with age.  This has been the case with me and my son even with my mothers side being Native American descent.

Answer 2

I hope you won't cuz  I wouldn't want your children to be stupid.

Answer 3

yes very possible.  dark is not necessarily dominant, here i will give you a description of my family

Me - dark brown, jet black as a baby - brown eyes

My husband - Blonde as a baby/kid/adult - hazel eyes

My mum - Blonde as a baby/kid. brown now - blue eyes

My dad - always dark brown - brown eyes

My husbands mum - blonde - hazel eyes

My husbands dad - black - brown eyes

As you can see, my mum had blonde hair but i have dark, but my husbands mum had blonde hair and so does he.  I have 2 children, 6 and 15 months and guess what? - blonde hair and blue eyes. I have brown eyes, my husband has hazel.  So the eye colour is from my mum.  

So yes I think there is a high chance your children will be blonde haired and blue eyes

Answer 4

Yes, it is possible. My husband and I both have dark hair and so do our parents. There are no blonds among the six of us, but our 17 year old daughter has beautiful natural light blond hair. Perhaps the great grandparents were blond because the genes were present and carried along to her.

Answer 5

The short answer is YES it is possible.

the long answer includes reccesive gene's and DNA but I think like eye colour the hair is fairly similar in its formulation.

Possible but improbable if very few family members feature the blonde hair.

Answer 6

Yes, though lighter hair is usually recessive, especially in the case of redheads, so it is less likely than the alternative, but yes a blond mate would increase those chances.  In the case of redheads, both parents usually have to be redheaded or at least have the gene for the offspring to be redheads, and the hair must be light enough for it to show (ie blond).

Answer 7

It is a recessive gene. It is possible to happen, but since dark hair is a dominant trait, it will be more likely that your first child would have dark hair.

Lets assume that both of you have a recessive blond gene and a dominant dark hair gene. The odds are about one in four that you will have a blond haired child. However, if you have two blond haired parents, you are certain to have blond haired children because the dominant gene is not present at all.

Answer 8

Most children have blonde-ish hair when they are young. If you married a guy with blonde hair, and you also carry a blonde hair gene there is a chance you could have blonde children.

And this has NOTHING to do with Anthropology...it's genetics.

Ok...this is how it works, for traits such as height, hair color and eye color, there are dominant traits and recessive traits. For example Brown eyes are dominant  to blue eyes. In order for a child to have blue eyes, they have to inherit both recessive genes, if you or your mate contributes a dominant gene to that child, he/she will have brown eyes, it's the same with all inherited traits. If you husband has blonde hair, and you have a blonde gene, it is possible for your children to have blonde hair.

Answer 9

Yes.  It is completely genetic.  Now I am not sure exactly how hair color works but in my family for example, my parents have brown hair.  On both sides my parents have red headed siblings.  Out of the four of us children, 3 have red hair and 1 has brown hair.  Similarly I am the only curly haired child, my mother's brother has tight curly hair and my fathers is wavy - I look like Shirley Temple.  Both of my parents carry the genetic material for red and curly hair.

Your genes have markers called alleles.  The phenotype (characteristic) of the allele can be dominant recessive or neither.  In the case of dominant vs recessive phenotypes (traits/characteristics) - you will exhibit the phenotype of the dominant allele anytime it exists in the genetic paring of a chromosome. Our chromosomes are made up of a pair of genes. Identical genes (with the same allele) are called homozygous and genes paired with two different alleles are called heterozygous.  Two dominant alleles will exhibit the same trait as a dominant and recessive allele pairing.  When two recessive alleles are paired the recessive trait is exhibited.  Eye color is good example - brown is dominant over blue - two brown eyed parents who are both heterozygous for the trait can produce a blue eyed baby when the recessive alleles from each parent are paired in the baby's genetics.  Because having blue eyes is a homozygous recessive trait, blue eyed parents can only produce blue eyed children.

Answer 10

my dad has black hair and my mother brown.....I have dark brown hair....

my husband has dirty blond hair and was blond as a child...and both of his parents have dark hair...

our first born daughter is a blond! i never expected a blond child.....ever. and neither of us have curly hair but my 2nd daughter does.

genes are funny things. brown hair is a dominant trait but if you have a build up of recessive genes they will out number the dominant genes. which is what happened with us.

Answer 11

I have no suggestions as to what color hair your child will have, but, I thought I'd share my past experience with you.  I have black hair and brown eyes.  My boyfriend has the same.  His dad the same and his mom brown hair and hazel eyes.  My dad black hair, brown eyes and my mom red hair and green eyes.  Guess what color hair and eyes my son pops out with?  Blonde hair and blue eyes.  Try explaining that one. (no, it wasn't the milkman's either)

Answer 12

If having blonde hair is in any of your family genes, there is a chance that your child can inherit that gene. but of course if both sides have it, then the chances would be bigger.

Answer 13

yea if you and ur husband is blond, and you are blond at birth, the chances of blond children is high.The hair color and the eye color are diff, becaue they have diff traits.

Answer 14

Have people ever said to you, "It's in your genes?" They were probably talking about a physical characteristic, personality trait, or talent that you share with other members of your family. We know that genes play an important role in shaping how we look and act and even whether we get sick. Now scientists are trying to use that knowledge in exciting new ways, such as preventing and treating health problems.

What Is a Gene?

To understand how genes (pronounced: jeens) work, let's review some biology basics. Most living organisms are made up of cells that contain a substance called deoxyribonucleic (pronounced: dee-ahk-see-rye-bow-noo-klee-ik) acid (DNA). DNA is wrapped together to form structures called chromosomes (pronounced: krow-muh-soams).

Most cells in the human body have 23 pairs of chromosomes, making a total of 46. Individual sperm and egg cells, however, have just 23 unpaired chromosomes. You received half of your chromosomes from your mother's egg and the other half from your father's sperm cell. A male child receives an X chromosome from his mother and a Y chromosome from his father; females get an X chromosome from each parent.

So where do genes come in? Genes are sections or segments of DNA that are carried on the chromosomes and determine specific human characteristics, such as height or hair color. Because each parent gives you one chromosome in each pair, you have two of every gene (except for some of the genes on the X and Y chromosomes in boys because boys have only one of each). Some characteristics come from a single gene, whereas others come from gene combinations. Because every person has from 25,000 to 35,000 different genes, there is an almost endless number of possible combinations!

Genes and Heredity

Heredity is the passing of genes from one generation to the next. You inherit your parents' genes. Heredity helps to make you the person you are today: short or tall, with black hair or blond, with green eyes or blue.

Can your genes determine whether you'll be a straight-A student or a great athlete? Heredity plays an important role, but your environment (including things like the foods you eat and the people you interact with) also influences your abilities and interests.

How Do Genes Work?

DNA contains four chemicals (adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine - called A, T, C, and G for short) that are strung in patterns on extremely thin, coiled strands in the cell. How thin? Cells are tiny - invisible to the naked eye - and each cell in your body contains about 6 feet of DNA thread, for a total of about 3 billion miles (if all your DNA threads were stretched out straight) of DNA inside you! The DNA patterns are the codes for manufacturing proteins, chemicals that enable the body to work and grow.

Genes hold the instructions for making protein products (like the enzymes to digest food or the pigment that gives your eyes their color). As your cells duplicate, they pass this genetic information to the new cells. Genes can be dominant or recessive. Dominant genes show their effect even if there is only one copy of that gene in the pair. For a person to have a recessive disease or characteristic, the person must have the gene on both chromosomes of the pair.

What Are Genetic Disorders?

Cells can sometimes contain changes or variants in the information in their genes. This is called gene mutation, and it often occurs when cells are aging or have been exposed to certain chemicals or radiation. Fortunately, cells usually recognize these mutations and repair them by themselves. Other times, however, they can cause illnesses, such as some types of cancer. And if the gene mutation exists in egg or sperm cells, children can inherit the mutated gene from their parents.

Researchers have identified more than 4,000 diseases that are caused by genetic variants. But having a genetic mutation that may cause disease doesn't always mean that a person will actually get that disease. Because you inherit a gene from each parent, having one disease gene usually does not cause any problems because the normal gene can allow your body to make the normal protein it needs.

On average, people probably carry from 5 to 10 variant or disease genes in their cells. Problems arise when the disease gene is dominant or when the same recessive disease gene is present on both chromosomes in a pair. Problems can also occur when several variant genes interact with each other - or with the environment - to increase susceptibility to diseases.

If a person carries the dominant gene for a disease, he or she will usually have the disease and each of the person's children will have a 1 in 2 (50%) chance of inheriting the gene and getting the disease. Diseases caused by a dominant gene include achondroplasia (pronounced: ay-kon-druh-play-zhuh, a form of dwarfism), Marfan syndrome (a connective tissue disorder), and Huntington disease (a degenerative disease of the nervous system).

People who have one recessive gene for a disease are called carriers, and they don't usually have the disease because they have a normal gene of that pair that can do the job. When two carriers have a child together, however, the child has a 1 in 4 (25%) chance of getting the disease gene from both parents, which results in the child having the disease. Cystic fibrosis (a lung disease), sickle cell anemia (a blood disease), and Tay-Sachs disease (which causes nervous system problems) are caused by recessive disease genes from both parents coming together in a child.

Some recessive genetic variants are carried only on the X chromosome, which means that usually only guys can develop the disease because they have only one X chromosome. Girls have two X chromosomes, so they would need to inherit two copies of the recessive gene to get the disease. X-linked disorders include the bleeding disorder hemophilia (pronounced: hee-muh-fih-lee-uh) and color blindness.

Sometimes when an egg and sperm unite, the new cell gets too many or too few chromosomes. Most children born with Down syndrome, which is associated with mental retardation, have an extra chromosome number 21.

In some cases, people who are concerned that they might carry certain variant genes can have genetic testing so they can learn their children's risk of having a disease. Pregnant women can also have tests done to see if the fetus they are carrying might have certain genetic illnesses. Genetic testing usually involves taking a sample of someone's blood, skin, or amniotic fluid, and checking it for signs of genetic diseases or disorders.

Changing Genes

Sometimes scientists alter genes on purpose. For many years, researchers have altered the genes in microbes and plants to produce offspring with special characteristics, such as an increased resistance to disease or pests, or the ability to grow in difficult environments. We call this genetic engineering.

Gene therapy is a promising new field of medical research. In gene therapy, researchers try to supply copies of healthy genes to cells with variant or missing genes so that the "good" genes will take over. Viruses are often used to carry the healthy genes into the targeted cells because many viruses can insert their own DNA into targeted cells.

But there are problems with gene therapy. Scientists haven't yet identified every gene in the human body or what each one does. Huge scientific efforts like The Human Genome (pronounced: jee-nome) Project and related projects have recently completed a map of the entire human genome (all of the genetic material on a living thing's chromosomes), but it will take many more years to find out what each gene does and how they interact with one another. For most diseases, scientists don't know if and how genes play a role. Plus, there are major difficulties inserting the normal genes into the proper cells without causing problems for the rest of the body.

There are also concerns that people might try changing genes for ethically troubling reasons, such as to make smarter or more athletic children. No one knows what the long-term effects of that kind of change would be.

Still, for many people who have genetic diseases, gene therapy holds the hope that they - or their children - will be able to live better, healthier lives.

you may find this helpfull, and yes your children do have a chance of having blonde hair and yes it does work the same way with eye colour

Answer 15

Yes it is possible. Both parents have to have a gene for blonde hair in their genetic make up. Those two blonde genes have to be present in the baby for its hair to be blonde. The same goes for blue eyes.  This was the basis for Hitlers belief that a "pure race" consisted of blonde haired blue eyed persons, because all other color genes were eliminated!!

Answer 16

i think hair color is genetic.  And that brown is dominant, while blond is recessive.  But that is a memory from a bilogy class long, long, ago.

but it is also influenced by how much you are in the sun, and by age.   From what i know, yes, you could have blond children.