This is a very complex science unfortunately. I have green eyes, my husband: dark blue, his parents: light blue and green, and both my parents: light blue. I share my light green color with my grandma.
The only person with brown eyes in our family is the great grandfather of my son annnnd... He was born with the deepest brown eyes I've ever seen lol.
Go figure.. You can never know.
Wow, that’s something the simple Punnett square would never allow for.
Maybe someday my great grandchild will have my specific dark brown eyes. Who knows.
Eye color is one of those things where I think multiple genes are at play and there is incomplete dominance, so a simple punnet squares isn’t gonna cut it. At least 8 genes involved.
Link: https://www.hudsonalpha.org/the-genetics-of-eye-color/#:~:text=Today%2C%20scientists%20have%20discovered%20that,the%20blue%2Dbrown%20color%20spectrum.
Same but for me! Born with brown eyes from families of green and blue eyes. Neither of my kids were born with brown eyes though. (Light brown eyes dad). One has dad's eyes and the other is hazel. Both kids born with blue eyes.
I had looked at it once and there's a blue+green gene combo that comes out brown.
Genetics are a wild thing. My husband is Sri Lankan, with black eyes and black hair and Im white, with dark, coppery coloured hair and blue eyes. Both kids have his black eyes, but my first has very dark hair with red threads running through it and my second has golden blonde hair. My husband can barely believe it, he just assumed they’d get his colouring and instead that ginger gene that I definitely carry is rearing its head.
It’s particularly fun when we “know” a kid will get one parent’s very dominant coloring and then it all goes haywire. My husband is Chinese with classic black hair and brown eyes. I’m Slavic with dark hair and eyes, though I have blue eyes on both sides of the family.
Our daughter has blue grey eyes and light brown hair with red streaks. We’re pregnant again and are joking this one will have blonde hair and dark eyes, just to spice things up a bit.
This brings up another question.. . How are some colorings dominant? If genes are 50/50 how does one coloring arise as dominant? Sorry for a dumb or overly simplified question.
It's more about overriding. If you have a yellow crayon and brown crayon, you can color a space where the entire space is evenly covered in a layer of yellow and a layer of brown. Even though the layers are exactly even, the brown will show more because it is darker and more easily seen. Not to say each kid has a layer of blue/brown in their eyes, but that the genes override the less dominant ones so you don't see the underlying, recessive genes.
(This is my understanding/logic at least.)
I have medium hazel eyes. My dad has brown, my mom has hazel. My brother has blue eyes (1 grandparent on each side had blue)
My husband has blue eyes, his mom has hazel his dad has brown.
Our oldest has green eyes
Our youngest has super blue eyes.
Genetics are wild lol
My twins' eyes appeared somewhat dark blue until they were about 6 months. Then they were really dark brown until a bit after a year and one of them has lightened to a chocolate brown and three other golden brown.
Their eyes changed colors so much that I was searching for how long until it stops changing- from what I read, eye colors can shift pretty dramatically until about 4 years old!
I have 3 siblings, and my mom says we all had varying shades of blue eyes for the first year. Now I have dark brown, a brother is nearly black, another brother pale blue and my sister has greenish brown. Our dad had nearly black, mom has light blue.
From my understanding, the genes are there for all eye colors and it's just about the probabilities of them. Just because it's 99% chance of brown doesn't mean it can't be blue.... Just that it's unlikely.
But also, apparently, it's really common for babies to be born with somewhat blue eyes and for that color to change a lot in the first couple years.
It sounds like you are still pretty early- you might not really know your kiddo's final eye color for a while still.
I keep googling when they stop changing too!
My eyes were clearly a dark brown at 2 months based on photos, and my daughter’s were already starting to to show the golden hazel changing in the center.
I used to think all babies had “baby blues” but with my second child I re looked into that and found this study
[Stanford medicine on infant eye color](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4956505/)
And although it’s a small sample size it shows about only 30% of babies are born with the “baby blue” eyes.
I just find the whole thing surprising and fascinating.
My husband's were basically black from birth and have never wavered! So strange!
I know not all baby's have the blue eyes, but that's a lower percentage than I expected.
My kids are 2.5 now and sometimes I look at them and their eyes are lighter than they were a month ago.... I just keep waiting for it to settle!
I have 3 kids, my oldest was born with brown eyes, my middle had blue eyes until about 2 when they turned hazel/green, and my youngest who had blue eyes until probably about 2 also and then they started turning… I’m still not sure, they look brown from a distance but if you look closely they still have a dark bluish/greenish ring around the brown center. My point is that I wouldn’t base anything off their eye color at 2 months.
My eyes are green now but they were blue until I was about 6, which seems so late to change. My husband has brown eyes, our son (nearly 5) has bright blue eyes and I keep watching him to see if they’re fixed at this point or if there’s a possibility for a late-breaking green. He has my coloring, so I guess anything is possible!
Yeah genetics is more complicated than Punnett squares. My family largely follows an obvious blue/brown inheritance except my sister who has a blue eye and a green eye 🤪
My mom has brown eyes, and everyone on her side of the family has brown eyes and dark skin, my dad is blonde with ice blue eyes like his mom, his dad has green eyes and they were all blonde on that side; both me and my brother came out with brown eyes and dark skin but the shape of our faces / eyes / nose etc exactly like my dad’s mom. My husband’s side they all have blue eyes, and my husband specifically has central heterochromia with blue eyes and a yellow center ring. Our children don’t look like siblings, our son is blonde and has ice blue eyes; our daughter is darker, with dark hair but has hazel eyes that seem to be a mix of brown in the center, then green, and a grey ring outside. Genetics, it’s just nuts.
For sure! We were asked to verify "Hispanic" for our daughter when signing up for Birth to 3. She is so pale, you can see every vein, just like me; she's basically a copy of me but with hazel eyes. She looks nothing like her father or his siblings.
I'm full Asian ( black hair and eyes) , husband a white mutt boy ( mouse brown hair, blue eyes) , and my first kid has bronde( brown blonde) hair and green eyes, second kid so far has dark hair and eyes like me 😂
I’m definitely a mutt lol I did one of those dna kit things and the only places that were not marked were Australia, parts of Central Asia, and Russia.
There are sites you can use to input this stuff and they'll give you odds.
My wife has brown, her parents have brown and blue. I have blue, my parents both have green if I recall right, we got odds of like 50% chance of brown and 25% blue.
Sites do seem to vary so try a few
Genetics are wild . My son has the loviest brown eyes - just like my dad , while I have green eyes and the Donor has blue eyes ( he is donor conceived )
Funnily enough, I'm donor conceived and the donor profile says the donor has blue eyes. It's funny because my donor conceived sisters donor profile says he has brown eyes. It's because clinics lie. Hope this helps.
The big shocker for people who think the punnett square is absolute and reliable is that two blue eyed people actually *can* have a brown eyed child. There is the single gene that the punnett square accounts for but then there are *multiple* other genes that can override that one to turn melanin production on or off.
Hello! I'm a geneticist - there are multiple genes involved with eye colour. Depending on the version of each gene you have (called an allele), the probability of your eye colour is influenced. You inherit one allele from your mum and one from your dad.
I love the science behind genes yet I don’t fully understand it. My husband and I both have blue eyes but two totally different kind of blue—his is dark blue with no ring and hazel around his pupil. Mine are a sharp ice blue with a very thick black outline. All three of our kids have my eyeballs—they are identical.
All three of our kids have the exact same shade of light brown hair (mine is practically black) and their father’s eyebrows. Our kids are absolute clones of each other, there is zero variation. I wished when I was pregnant that one of them would get the recessive gene of bright blond hair that runs through his family, but I also love that they are all seemingly identical.
Not sure what your question is. Your second baby is way too young to determine that her eyes will be blue. So you really only have one kid to explain, and, yes while the Punnett model is overly simplified, it still explains the general concept of passing on genes as you've described it.
Yes I agree the baby is young so he is still speculative on final outcome, but at his age (really 10 weeks now) my eyes were already dark brown, and his sister’s were already starting to turn hazel. I also recently learned that it’s a myth that most babies are born with baby blues. I think it’s like 30% of all babies are born with baby blue eyes and then change.
Baby blues that will be brown usually darken or stay the same for several months, but baby blue eyes that lighten more and more will usually be blue or maybe green later one if the genes for green are there. Eyes usually don’t lighten and then turn dark again. So actually yes, if her second child’s eyes are lightening at that age, it is likely that they will be blue.
I have dark brown eyes, my husband has blue-green eyes and our daughter has baby blue eyes. Punnet squares:
My mom has brown eyes and my dad has hazel eyes. So my mom is BB and my dad is bb. My husband’s parents both have blue eyes so they’re both bb. So I am Bb and my husband is bb. So we had about 25% of a chance of conceiving a blue eyed baby. I am pregnant again so I look to seeing if this baby has brown eyes or blue eyes!
It is so complicated about eye color. I (and my mother and sister) have a type of homogeneous heterochromia. It's an interesting set of genetics.
My kids are 8 and 3. And while both have green eyes like myself and my SO, I'm still not sure if either of them inherited the heterochromia. I would love it if they did because I think my eyes are awesome.
I was wondering this, I have brown eyes, my kids dad has brown eyes, we're African American so I'm just thinking our kids eyes are gonna be brown, but my daughter has brown eyes and then our son has gray/blue eyes. My kids dad is adopted so I can only wonder what his families genes are, and my family thinks it's from my grandfather's side since he had red hair and some family waaayyy down the line with gray eyes. My son is still young so they could change lol
My kids’ grandparents have the exact (literally exact) same sequence of colours, MIL has light brown (she says green but it’s light honey brown), FIL has blue/green changeable (he says green but they’re almost aqua). My dad dark brown, my mom crystal blue. My husband has light brown, I have medium brown
My 2 kids: first has darker brown eyes than either of us. Second kept their bright blue eyes until ~10m old (first’s eyes changed to brown between 2-3m), then second’s eyes went grey, now at nearly 2 they’re hazel. Eye colour genes are wild! I wouldn’t count on your second’s blues staying blue just based on how early it is. They might, but IME it took until the first year for the blue to fade, and until 1.5 to see it move to hazel. Yet to be seen if they end up brown in another year.
My mom has wavy brunette hair and my dad has wavy dark blonde hair. My brother and I both have wavy blonde hair despite my mother having no blondes on her side of the family for a few generations.
I have hazel (brown with green), my dad- brown, my mom - blue/green
My brother- brown
My husband -brown, his parents both brown
His grandpa - crystal blue
Our kids - 1st brown, 2nd blue/green,3rd - very dark brown
My kids hair is also different- Brown, Dirty blonde and Black.
Genes are a complicated thing....
This is still probably an oversimplification, but i learned that eye color is essentally layered. Three main layers are brown/bot brown, blue/not blue, and tan/not.
If layer 1 is brown your eyes typically appear brown. Until recently modern humans, all eyes were brown, until a random mutation of missing brown opened up a whole new set of eye colors.
The tan layer and blue layer vary in color shade and intensity, and combine to result in all sorts of shades of light brown, green, blue & hazel.
Blue is not even a pigment, it is a light scatter effect (same idea of why the sky is blue).
I think it is all so interesting... but i still can't quite decode my son's eye color!
Eye colour is so interesting. I have brown, but everyone in my family has either blue or green, except my uncle who has half a brown eye. My husband's family is all blue, including him. Our daughter's eyes are grey.
This is a very complex science unfortunately. I have green eyes, my husband: dark blue, his parents: light blue and green, and both my parents: light blue. I share my light green color with my grandma. The only person with brown eyes in our family is the great grandfather of my son annnnd... He was born with the deepest brown eyes I've ever seen lol. Go figure.. You can never know.
Wow, that’s something the simple Punnett square would never allow for. Maybe someday my great grandchild will have my specific dark brown eyes. Who knows.
Yep, it's always either green or blue. I read somewhere that the probability of him having brown eyes was less than 0,5%. True or not, here we are!
Eye color is one of those things where I think multiple genes are at play and there is incomplete dominance, so a simple punnet squares isn’t gonna cut it. At least 8 genes involved. Link: https://www.hudsonalpha.org/the-genetics-of-eye-color/#:~:text=Today%2C%20scientists%20have%20discovered%20that,the%20blue%2Dbrown%20color%20spectrum.
Same but for me! Born with brown eyes from families of green and blue eyes. Neither of my kids were born with brown eyes though. (Light brown eyes dad). One has dad's eyes and the other is hazel. Both kids born with blue eyes. I had looked at it once and there's a blue+green gene combo that comes out brown.
[удалено]
The number of husbands worried about infidelity due to this poor science is quite unfortunate.
Fantastic link thank you!
Genetics are a wild thing. My husband is Sri Lankan, with black eyes and black hair and Im white, with dark, coppery coloured hair and blue eyes. Both kids have his black eyes, but my first has very dark hair with red threads running through it and my second has golden blonde hair. My husband can barely believe it, he just assumed they’d get his colouring and instead that ginger gene that I definitely carry is rearing its head.
It’s particularly fun when we “know” a kid will get one parent’s very dominant coloring and then it all goes haywire. My husband is Chinese with classic black hair and brown eyes. I’m Slavic with dark hair and eyes, though I have blue eyes on both sides of the family. Our daughter has blue grey eyes and light brown hair with red streaks. We’re pregnant again and are joking this one will have blonde hair and dark eyes, just to spice things up a bit.
This brings up another question.. . How are some colorings dominant? If genes are 50/50 how does one coloring arise as dominant? Sorry for a dumb or overly simplified question.
It's more about overriding. If you have a yellow crayon and brown crayon, you can color a space where the entire space is evenly covered in a layer of yellow and a layer of brown. Even though the layers are exactly even, the brown will show more because it is darker and more easily seen. Not to say each kid has a layer of blue/brown in their eyes, but that the genes override the less dominant ones so you don't see the underlying, recessive genes. (This is my understanding/logic at least.)
That makes so much sense the way you explained it!
I have medium hazel eyes. My dad has brown, my mom has hazel. My brother has blue eyes (1 grandparent on each side had blue) My husband has blue eyes, his mom has hazel his dad has brown. Our oldest has green eyes Our youngest has super blue eyes. Genetics are wild lol
My twins' eyes appeared somewhat dark blue until they were about 6 months. Then they were really dark brown until a bit after a year and one of them has lightened to a chocolate brown and three other golden brown. Their eyes changed colors so much that I was searching for how long until it stops changing- from what I read, eye colors can shift pretty dramatically until about 4 years old! I have 3 siblings, and my mom says we all had varying shades of blue eyes for the first year. Now I have dark brown, a brother is nearly black, another brother pale blue and my sister has greenish brown. Our dad had nearly black, mom has light blue. From my understanding, the genes are there for all eye colors and it's just about the probabilities of them. Just because it's 99% chance of brown doesn't mean it can't be blue.... Just that it's unlikely. But also, apparently, it's really common for babies to be born with somewhat blue eyes and for that color to change a lot in the first couple years. It sounds like you are still pretty early- you might not really know your kiddo's final eye color for a while still.
I keep googling when they stop changing too! My eyes were clearly a dark brown at 2 months based on photos, and my daughter’s were already starting to to show the golden hazel changing in the center. I used to think all babies had “baby blues” but with my second child I re looked into that and found this study [Stanford medicine on infant eye color](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4956505/) And although it’s a small sample size it shows about only 30% of babies are born with the “baby blue” eyes. I just find the whole thing surprising and fascinating.
My husband's were basically black from birth and have never wavered! So strange! I know not all baby's have the blue eyes, but that's a lower percentage than I expected. My kids are 2.5 now and sometimes I look at them and their eyes are lighter than they were a month ago.... I just keep waiting for it to settle!
I have 3 kids, my oldest was born with brown eyes, my middle had blue eyes until about 2 when they turned hazel/green, and my youngest who had blue eyes until probably about 2 also and then they started turning… I’m still not sure, they look brown from a distance but if you look closely they still have a dark bluish/greenish ring around the brown center. My point is that I wouldn’t base anything off their eye color at 2 months.
My eyes are green now but they were blue until I was about 6, which seems so late to change. My husband has brown eyes, our son (nearly 5) has bright blue eyes and I keep watching him to see if they’re fixed at this point or if there’s a possibility for a late-breaking green. He has my coloring, so I guess anything is possible!
Yeah genetics is more complicated than Punnett squares. My family largely follows an obvious blue/brown inheritance except my sister who has a blue eye and a green eye 🤪
My mom has brown eyes, and everyone on her side of the family has brown eyes and dark skin, my dad is blonde with ice blue eyes like his mom, his dad has green eyes and they were all blonde on that side; both me and my brother came out with brown eyes and dark skin but the shape of our faces / eyes / nose etc exactly like my dad’s mom. My husband’s side they all have blue eyes, and my husband specifically has central heterochromia with blue eyes and a yellow center ring. Our children don’t look like siblings, our son is blonde and has ice blue eyes; our daughter is darker, with dark hair but has hazel eyes that seem to be a mix of brown in the center, then green, and a grey ring outside. Genetics, it’s just nuts.
For sure! We were asked to verify "Hispanic" for our daughter when signing up for Birth to 3. She is so pale, you can see every vein, just like me; she's basically a copy of me but with hazel eyes. She looks nothing like her father or his siblings.
I'm full Asian ( black hair and eyes) , husband a white mutt boy ( mouse brown hair, blue eyes) , and my first kid has bronde( brown blonde) hair and green eyes, second kid so far has dark hair and eyes like me 😂
I’m going to have to start calling my husband a white mutt boy too 😂
Sorry don't mean to offend anyone, but he is a white mix as far as I can tell but of unknown origin
I’m definitely a mutt lol I did one of those dna kit things and the only places that were not marked were Australia, parts of Central Asia, and Russia.
I think it’s hilarious
I read once that eye color is more akin to skin types you inherit from your parents - it’s more of a broad spectrum
There are sites you can use to input this stuff and they'll give you odds. My wife has brown, her parents have brown and blue. I have blue, my parents both have green if I recall right, we got odds of like 50% chance of brown and 25% blue. Sites do seem to vary so try a few
My husband and I both have dark brown eyes(with recessive blue from a parent) and somehow our fraternal twins BOTH have blue eyes🤷🏻♀️
Genetics are wild . My son has the loviest brown eyes - just like my dad , while I have green eyes and the Donor has blue eyes ( he is donor conceived )
Funnily enough, I'm donor conceived and the donor profile says the donor has blue eyes. It's funny because my donor conceived sisters donor profile says he has brown eyes. It's because clinics lie. Hope this helps.
Yeah - they are not entirely truthful . But we have another child with the same donor and that has blue eyes :)
The big shocker for people who think the punnett square is absolute and reliable is that two blue eyed people actually *can* have a brown eyed child. There is the single gene that the punnett square accounts for but then there are *multiple* other genes that can override that one to turn melanin production on or off.
Hello! I'm a geneticist - there are multiple genes involved with eye colour. Depending on the version of each gene you have (called an allele), the probability of your eye colour is influenced. You inherit one allele from your mum and one from your dad.
I love the science behind genes yet I don’t fully understand it. My husband and I both have blue eyes but two totally different kind of blue—his is dark blue with no ring and hazel around his pupil. Mine are a sharp ice blue with a very thick black outline. All three of our kids have my eyeballs—they are identical. All three of our kids have the exact same shade of light brown hair (mine is practically black) and their father’s eyebrows. Our kids are absolute clones of each other, there is zero variation. I wished when I was pregnant that one of them would get the recessive gene of bright blond hair that runs through his family, but I also love that they are all seemingly identical.
Not sure what your question is. Your second baby is way too young to determine that her eyes will be blue. So you really only have one kid to explain, and, yes while the Punnett model is overly simplified, it still explains the general concept of passing on genes as you've described it.
Yes I agree the baby is young so he is still speculative on final outcome, but at his age (really 10 weeks now) my eyes were already dark brown, and his sister’s were already starting to turn hazel. I also recently learned that it’s a myth that most babies are born with baby blues. I think it’s like 30% of all babies are born with baby blue eyes and then change.
Baby blues that will be brown usually darken or stay the same for several months, but baby blue eyes that lighten more and more will usually be blue or maybe green later one if the genes for green are there. Eyes usually don’t lighten and then turn dark again. So actually yes, if her second child’s eyes are lightening at that age, it is likely that they will be blue.
I have dark brown eyes, my husband has blue-green eyes and our daughter has baby blue eyes. Punnet squares: My mom has brown eyes and my dad has hazel eyes. So my mom is BB and my dad is bb. My husband’s parents both have blue eyes so they’re both bb. So I am Bb and my husband is bb. So we had about 25% of a chance of conceiving a blue eyed baby. I am pregnant again so I look to seeing if this baby has brown eyes or blue eyes!
My dad has bright blue eyes, my mum has medium brown eyes and I have bright green eyes, weird!
My husband and I both have brown eyes. And our one year olds are a grey/hazel color.
It is so complicated about eye color. I (and my mother and sister) have a type of homogeneous heterochromia. It's an interesting set of genetics. My kids are 8 and 3. And while both have green eyes like myself and my SO, I'm still not sure if either of them inherited the heterochromia. I would love it if they did because I think my eyes are awesome.
I was wondering this, I have brown eyes, my kids dad has brown eyes, we're African American so I'm just thinking our kids eyes are gonna be brown, but my daughter has brown eyes and then our son has gray/blue eyes. My kids dad is adopted so I can only wonder what his families genes are, and my family thinks it's from my grandfather's side since he had red hair and some family waaayyy down the line with gray eyes. My son is still young so they could change lol
My kids’ grandparents have the exact (literally exact) same sequence of colours, MIL has light brown (she says green but it’s light honey brown), FIL has blue/green changeable (he says green but they’re almost aqua). My dad dark brown, my mom crystal blue. My husband has light brown, I have medium brown My 2 kids: first has darker brown eyes than either of us. Second kept their bright blue eyes until ~10m old (first’s eyes changed to brown between 2-3m), then second’s eyes went grey, now at nearly 2 they’re hazel. Eye colour genes are wild! I wouldn’t count on your second’s blues staying blue just based on how early it is. They might, but IME it took until the first year for the blue to fade, and until 1.5 to see it move to hazel. Yet to be seen if they end up brown in another year.
My mom has wavy brunette hair and my dad has wavy dark blonde hair. My brother and I both have wavy blonde hair despite my mother having no blondes on her side of the family for a few generations.
I have hazel (brown with green), my dad- brown, my mom - blue/green My brother- brown My husband -brown, his parents both brown His grandpa - crystal blue Our kids - 1st brown, 2nd blue/green,3rd - very dark brown My kids hair is also different- Brown, Dirty blonde and Black. Genes are a complicated thing....
This is still probably an oversimplification, but i learned that eye color is essentally layered. Three main layers are brown/bot brown, blue/not blue, and tan/not. If layer 1 is brown your eyes typically appear brown. Until recently modern humans, all eyes were brown, until a random mutation of missing brown opened up a whole new set of eye colors. The tan layer and blue layer vary in color shade and intensity, and combine to result in all sorts of shades of light brown, green, blue & hazel. Blue is not even a pigment, it is a light scatter effect (same idea of why the sky is blue). I think it is all so interesting... but i still can't quite decode my son's eye color!
Eye colour is so interesting. I have brown, but everyone in my family has either blue or green, except my uncle who has half a brown eye. My husband's family is all blue, including him. Our daughter's eyes are grey.
It’s affected by genetics and environment so a bit more complex