"How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" she asked the children, who were white. Why'd they shoot that King?" All 28 children found their desks, and Elliott said she had something special for them to do, to begin to understand the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk. On the morning of april 5, 1968, a Friday, Steven Armstrong stepped into Jane Elliott's third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa. She insists it strengthened their character. This prediction tool is really just a fun way to dream up the different color possibilities.Riceville, Iowa, was the unlikely setting for a controversial classroom exercise created by Jane Elliott. So what color hair will your baby have? You might have a pretty good idea, or you might be in for a pretty fun surprise. Furthering the confusion, sometimes hair color changes as the baby ages. This is really just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the point.
If instead of blonde from dada, it gets brown, baby will be auburn. So, if baby gets a red allele from mama, and a blonde allele from dada, it will be strawberry blonde. Instead, when a baby receives a red allele from a parent, it blends with whatever allele it receives from the other parent. Red hair: Red hair is a whole different ball game and is classified as an “ incomplete dominate” meaning it’s neither dominate or recessive. Helpful, right? Genetics are weird.īlonde hair: Blonde is a recessive trait, and a blonde-blonde pairing would result in blonde offspring. In a black-brunette pairing, the child will likely have black hair, but could end up with a shade of brown. In a brunette-brunette pairing, your offspring will likely have a shade of brown. In a blonde-brunette pairing, there is a chance for a blonde child, though the odds are more in favor of a brunette child. It is non-blending with lighter colors, meaning if you or your partner have black hair, odds are your offspring will have black hair.īrown hair: Being brunette allows for a little more flexibility, but this is based off what unexpressed alleles both parents are carrying around, and how many shades of brown there are. Keeping in mind that determining hair color isn’t quite this easy, in general here’s how these common scenarios play out between our dominate and recessive hair color genes:īlack hair: Black hair is both the most common hair color worldwide, and is typically the dominant trait. There are several forms with varying severity, affecting about 1 in 18-20,000 people in the US.Īgain - all of this is being simplified down for the sake of brevity, but you get the jist. If there's some sort of genetic mutation or defect of the genes that produce melanin, albinism - where little to no melanin is deposited in the hair, skin, or iris - can result. People who only have a little brown eumelanin have blond hair. Eumelanin gets broken down even further into brown eumelanin and black eumelanin - each of which are responsible for the corresponding shade of brown or black hair. Pheomelanin is responsible for red tones in hair, as well as the skin, lips, and even freckles.
It’s also worth mentioning pheomelanin and eumelanin, which are melanin pigments responsible for coloring black, brown, and red hair. That all said, predicting a baby’s hair color is more complex than a mini-genetics lesson can explain, partly because hair color can blend, and the final color can change as your child ages.
Not everything they pass along is expressed, but we still have the ability to pass these traits on to our children.Įye and hair color is an example of how the dominant and recessive alleles you and your partner are carrying around can combine to create unique traits, like dark hair, dimples, blue eyes, or even a widow’s peak - even when these traits aren’t expressed by either parent. Each of our parents contribute portions of their DNA via their chromosomes that then become our own genetic code. To answer that, we’re going to need a mini-genetics lesson. It doesn’t take much to ripple the pond, though, which is where things like dominant and recessive genes, alleles, phenotypes, pigments, and blending come into play. Sure, you can always draw a genetic wildcard, but for the most part, if your entire family has one hair color the odds suggest that your baby will come out with whatever the fam is rocking. Predicting Hair Colorįor some, the big reveal will be pretty anticlimactic. Predicting a baby's hair color is one characteristic where a relatively accurate, educated guess can be made. While all physical traits are passed down through a complicated game of genetic chess, some are easier to predict than others.
Wondering what your baby will look after they finally get here is par for the course when you’re an expecting parent.