Both Parents Have Green Eyes What Will Baby Have?
What color eyes will my child have? – There’s no guarantee when it comes to your offspring’s eye color. While a baby inherits half of their eye color genetics from one parent and half from the other parent, the way that the genes interact also plays a role in determining eye color.
Differences in eye color are also influenced by differing amounts of melanin, the pigment responsible for eye color (plus hair color and skin tone). For instance, many white non-Hispanic babies are born with blue eyes because they don’t have the full amount of melanin present in their irises at birth.
As the child grows older, if they’ve developed slightly more melanin in their irises, the eyes will be green or hazel, When the iris stores a lot of melanin, the eyes will be amber (a golden brown), light brown or dark brown. Even though you don’t know the amount of melanin your baby will have, you can still get a pretty good sense of eye color from the parents’ eye colors.
Two blue-eyed parents are likely to have a blue-eyed child, but it’s not guaranteed. Two brown-eyed parents are likely to have a brown-eyed child. Again, it’s not guaranteed. Two green-eyed parents are likely to have a green-eyed child, although there are exceptions. Two hazel-eyed parents are likely to have a hazel-eyed child, although a different eye color could emerge. If one of the grandparents has blue eyes, the odds of having a baby with blue eyes increases slightly. If one parent has brown eyes and the other has blue eyes, the chances of having a brown-eyed or blue-eyed baby are roughly even.
The Fertility Institutes, which offers fertility services in California, New York, Utah and Mexico, offers the following odds of a baby’s eye color based on the parents’ eye colors. (Due to rounding, percentages don’t always add up to 100%.)
Both parents with brown eyes: 75% chance of baby with brown eyes, 18.8% chance of baby with green eyes, 6.3% chance of baby with blue eyes. Both parents with blue eyes: 99% chance of baby with blue eyes, 1% chance of baby with green eyes, 0% chance of baby with brown eyes. Both parents with green eyes: 75% chance of baby with green eyes, 25% of baby with blue eyes, 0% chance of baby with brown eyes. One parent with brown eyes and one parent with blue eyes: 50% chance of baby with brown eyes, 50% chance of baby with blue eyes, 0% chance of baby with green eyes. One parent with brown eyes and one parent with green eyes: 50% chance of baby with brown eyes, 37.5% chance of baby with green eyes, 12.5% chance of baby with blue eyes. One parent with blue eyes and one parent with green eyes: 50% of chance of baby with blue eyes, 50% chance of baby with green eyes, 0% chance of baby with brown eyes.
Keep in mind that it may take six to 12 months for a baby’s true eye color to emerge, so the color you see at birth can certainly change. SEE RELATED: Is it true all babies are born with blue eyes?
Can 2 green eyed parents make a brown eyed baby?
Back to the Simple Model – In the simple model, two green-eyed parents could not have a brown-eyed child. It turns out that this is because in this model, everyone with one or two T’s for the HERC2 gene is predicted to have brown eyes. Scientists would say that the T version is dominant over the C version.
| Gene Version (HERC2) | What if means in Europeans |
| TT |
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| TC |
|
| CC |
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TT doesn’t always give brown eyes because those other 5 genes (as well as others) all affect eye color too. HERC2 is strong, but not that strong! So there you have it. Eye color is complicated enough that green-eyed parents can have a brown-eyed child. Heck, blue-eyed parents can even have a brown-eyed child! I have included the next section for those people who even want to go a bit deeper.
Is the green eye gene dominant?
Eye color inheritance pattern – Due to the number of genes involved in eye color, the inheritance pattern is complex. Although a child’s eye color can generally be predicted by looking at the color of the parents’ eyes, the polymorphisms that can arise mean a child may well have an unexpected eye color.
A child’s eye color depends on the pairing of genes passed on from each parent, which is thought to involve at least three gene pairs. The two main gene pairs geneticists have focused on are EYCL1 (also called the gey gene) and EYCL3 (also called the bey2 gene). The different variants of genes are referred to as alleles.
The gey gene has one allele that gives rise to green eyes and one allele that gives rise to blue eyes. The bey2 gene has one allele for brown eyes and one for blue eyes. The allele for brown eyes is the most dominant allele and is always dominant over the other two alleles and the allele for green eyes is always dominant over the allele for blue eyes, which is always recessive.
This means parents who happen to have the same eye color can still produce a different eye color in their child. For example, if two parents with brown eyes each passed on a pair of blue alleles to their offspring, then the child would be born with blue eyes. However, if one of the parents passed on a green allele, then the child would have green eyes and if a brown allele was present, then the child would have brown eyes irrespective of what the other three alleles were.
Chromosome 15 – Eye colour However, this does not explain why two parents with blue eyes can have a child with brown eyes. It also does not explain how grey or hazel eyes arise. This is where modifier genes, other genes associated with eye color and mutations all come into picture, as they can all lead to variability in eye color.
Do grandparents eye color Affect baby?
What role do grandparents play in the traits of their grandchildren? Yes, grandparents’ genes can affect how their grandchildren look. After all, grandchildren get 25% of their genes from each of their grandparents. And genes have the instructions for how we look (and most everything else about us).
- So your kids will definitely inherit some of your parents’ genes.
- Which means they will inherit some of their looks too.
- But obviously not every trait that your parents have will be passed down to your kids.
- Your kids won’t be clones after all! Their looks will come from the combination of genes you and your future wife happen to pass down to them.
And these will have come from each of your parents. And so on through the generations. Sometimes eye color inheritance goes against the rules. Via So will your parents’ dark hair or hazel eyes come out in your kids? Probably not because of how these traits work genetically.
If you didn’t get your parents’ darker hair and eyes, odds are they aren’t lurking in your DNA waiting to re-emerge under the right circumstances. Blonde haired, blue eyed parents by and large have blonde haired, blue eyed kids. But nothing in genetics is cut and dry. Some seemingly impossible genetics can and do happen sometimes.
This means that your kids might get your grandparent’s darker eyes or hair even if you have kids with someone with blonde hair and blue eyes. It just would be much less likely than blonde haired, blue eyed kids.
Is eye color from parents or grandparents?
Eye colors are passed down through generations, but sometimes genetic variations can lead to surprising results in eye colors. Learn about the genetics of eye color in this guide. Whether eyes are blue or brown, eye color is determined by genetic traits handed down to children from their parents.
Can a child have brown eyes if parents don t?
Can two parents with blue eyes have a child with brown eyes? Yes, blue-eyed parents can definitely have a child with brown eyes. Or green or hazel eyes for that matter. If you stayed awake during high school biology, you might find this answer surprising.
- We were all taught that parents with blue eyes have kids with blue eyes.
- Every time.
- This has to do with the fact that blue eyes are supposed to be recessive to brown eyes.
- This means that if a parent has a brown eye gene, then that parent will have brown eyes.
- Which makes it impossible for two blue-eyed parents to have a brown-eyed child – they don’t have a brown eye gene to pass on! In fact, this is the model we used for our eye color calculator.* And that we talk about extensively here at Ask a Geneticist.
Blue-eyed parents can have kids with brown eyes. (Image via Shutterstock) Now we aren’t being dishonest or trying to hide anything by presenting this model. It works great most of the time. But as with anything genetic, there are always exceptions. For example, DNA can and does change between generations.
So if a change happened that turned a blue eye color gene into a brown one, then blue-eyed parents could have a brown-eyed child. As you might guess, this sort of thing is pretty rare. Too rare to explain all the exceptions we see with eye color. So something else must be going on. That something is most likely other genes involved in eye color that we don’t know about.
Eye color used to be presented as a fairly simple trait. A big part of the model was the idea that we had an eye color gene that came in two varieties – brown and blue. Geneticists represented the brown version as “B” and the blue version as “b”. The model also said that blue (b) was recessive to brown (B).
This matters because it is an explanation for how brown-eyed parents can have a blue-eyed child. See, we have two copies of each of our genes – one from each biological parent. This means there are three possible combinations for this eye color gene: BB, Bb, and bb. BB is of course brown and in this model, bb would be blue.
Since blue is recessive to brown, Bb people have brown eyes. But they can pass a “b” down to their kids, who might end up with blue eyes. Now eye color is obviously more complicated than this. This model doesn’t explain green eyes for example. Scientists added a second gene to try to explain green eyes but we don’t need to go into that here ( to learn more about the two-gene model).
| Genes | What it Means |
| BB | Brown eyes |
| B b | Brown eyes |
| bb | Not brown eyes |
Again, bb people should not be able to pass on brown eyes to their kids. But we know they can. Which means that this model is incomplete (or wrong). The results I just put into the previous table are theoretical and based on the model I talked about. Here are some actual results I adapted from ‘s website:
| Genes | What it Means in Europeans |
| BB |
|
| B b |
|
| bb |
|
As you can see, the original model holds up pretty well for BB and bb people. Most BB people have brown eyes and most bb people don’t. But the model clearly doesn’t explain the following:
- 1% of bb people have brown eyes
- 1% of BB people have blue eyes (and 14% have green)
- 44% of Bb people do not have brown eyes
The biggest disconnect is with Bb people. Only 56% have brown eyes. If this holds up, I am not sure we can even call blue and green recessive to brown. Whatever the reason, these data give some clues about how two blue-eyed parents might have a brown-eyed child.
- For example, imagine two parents are Bb and have blue eyes.
- They each pass a B down to one of their children.
- That child will be BB and most likely have brown eyes.
- This example uses known data to show how blue-eyed parents might have a child with brown eyes.
- But it doesn’t explain why a Bb person has blue eyes in the first place.
To do this, we need to guess what other genes may be doing. And how they might be affecting the original eye color gene. Going into detail about these possibilities would need more space than I have here! And in the end, the truth is that eye color is a complex trait that we don’t fully understand yet.
Can one sibling have green eyes and other brown?
Blue Sky Science: Why can eye color vary between siblings? 6 Why can eye color vary between siblings? Eye color is determined by genetics and genes can vary between siblings. We all have genes in our body, and our genes carry DNA. Our DNA controls the way that we express different characteristics in our body, everything from hair color to eye color to skin color.
It was thought that there were only a few genes that determined eye color. In more recent years, scientists have realized there are many different genes and factors that affect eye color. In fact, they’ve found up to a dozen or more genes that could play a role in determining eye color. Two genes that are most important are involved in the production of melanin.
Melanin is a pigment, a type of pigment that has a very dark brown or black color. The amount of melanin expressed in the body, specifically in the eye, determines how dark our eyes are. It can vary from being very light blue to dark brown depending on how much melanin is in the eye.
The specific part of the eye that determines color is called the iris. It’s colored ring that surrounds the pupil, which is the black center of the eye that you look through. Siblings can inherit various genes from their parents and they don’t always get the same ones. Depending on what genes they get and the way that these genes are turned on or off and expressed, can play a role in eye color.
That’s how you’re able to get one sibling with light blue eyes versus another sibling that has dark brown-colored eyes. Updated on: July 23, 2017 : Blue Sky Science: Why can eye color vary between siblings?
Can babies get eye color from grandparents?
Do grandparents’ eye color affect baby? – Yes! Grandparents’ eye color can also impact baby’s eye color. Baby eye color is genetic, and genes pass from generation to generation. So if one grandparent had blue eyes, but the other had brown eyes, and you were born with brown eyes, and had a baby with another brown-eyed person, there is a chance that baby could be born with blue eyes.