In this case, the baby would be much lighter than either of you. But it’s possible that your baby will get all red cards from both of you like this: Odds are the baby will get black and red cards. When you have a baby together, you and your partner will each give a random half of your cards to your baby. If your partner has similar parents, then he or she will also end up with a mixed deck. This mixed hand would give you medium toned skin. If you have a dark dad (all clubs and spades) and a light mom (all hearts and diamonds) you will end up with one red card and one black card like this:
#LIGHT SKINNED BLACK BABY SKIN#
Now let’s pretend the black cards would lead to dark skin and the red cards would lead to light skin. In genetics, the word for two of the same is homozygous, the word for one of each is heterozygous. You’ll get two jacks, but they might be of the same suit (two jacks of hearts) or different (one jack of hearts and one jack of spades). Imagine your mom and dad give you one of each card from their own decks. And, like cards that come in different suits (spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts), there's more than one version of each card. Each gene is like a different card (ace, two, three… jack, queen, king). These genes and alleles are kind of like a deck of cards. Scientists call these slightly different genes alleles. Turns out that we are all unique because sometimes the copies of each gene are slightly different. If we all had the same DNA we’d all be identical twins!
Image from Wikimedia Different Types of Genes Get Shuffled AroundĮveryone has two copies of each gene, one from their mom and one from their dad. On top of all that, your actions can help change how your body reads your DNA! For example, staying out in the sun turns on genes that darken your skin.īecause of how skin color genetics works, these two could be sisters. Some of these genes can have big effects while others fine-tune a final color.
There are hundreds of different stretches of DNA all working together that decide your skin color. It turns out that there isn’t just one or even a few genes involved in skin color. The long answer has to do with the parts of your DNA that give specific instructions for one small part of you. The long answer, though, is much more interesting. The short answer is, yes! A couple can have a baby with a skin color that isn’t between their own.
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