Question: What is the scientific chance of my child being ginger, brown, or blonde, if me and my future wife both have brown hair?

Ken Dutton-Regester answered on 13 Mar 2012:

You know what? I actually don’t have much expertise in genetics that determines your hair colour. I would imagine that if you and your future wife had brown hair, statistically you would most likely get a child with brown hair. That’s not to say that you couldn’t get a child with another colour- some traits (such as hair colour) are recessive- this basically means it is not the predominant form that gets picked.

Take this example (building on from your question)-

Your Dad has Brown hair
Your Mum has Blond Hair
Your hair is Brown
Your partners hair is Brown
What will your child hair colour be?

Since your Mum has blond hair, you might have some blond genes in your DNA even though your hair is brown. The reason your hair is not blond is because this gene might be recessive- or another way to look at it- the brown hair gene is more predominant and overrules that blond hair colour.

This being said, if you partner has a similar scenario (i.e. has brown hair but has a recessive blond gene in her DNA) there is a chance that your child might inherit both blonde genes and no brown genes. Hence in this example, your child will have blond hair.

I am not sure but I think the genetics of hair colour determination involves a number of different genes interacting together.