If my wife has blue eyes and i have brown, what are the chances of our kids having blue eyes?

Question

My wife has blue eyes. Here sister and brother also do. BUT her father and mother have brown eyes. So i wonder what the chances are that we have blue eyed children considering i have brown eyes.

Answer 1

To work it out, you actually need to know the colour of your (and your wife's) parents eyes. Then go here http://museum.thetech.org/ugenetics/eyeCalc/eyecalculator.html

Answer 2

Well, your wife has blue eyes because her brown-eyed parents carried a recessive gene for blue eyes. It was just suppressed by the dominant brown-eye genes.

So the question is, do either of your parents have blue eyes? Any siblings? If someone in your family does, chances are that you carry this recessive gene as well. If that's so, then there's a 50/50 chance of your kid having blue eyes. You'd have one brown gene and one blue gene, and your wife has two blue genes. There are four 'mixing' possibilities, and only two of them have the brown gene ... so the other two pairs would produce a blue-eyed child.

If nobody on your side has blue, then sorry, the kid will have brown because he/she will inherit one blue gene from mom and one brown gene from you ... and brown will be dominant. But if those kids marry someone with blue eyes, you could still have blue-eyed grandkids.

Visit this page and read about how to create a Punnett square showing this.
http://www.feathersongaviary.com/Articles/punnett.html
It's about parrots, but the explanation of coloring genes holds true for humans as well, and it has examples of how to fill in your own Punnett squares to figure the possibilities.

Answer 3

Okay, here's the deal.....

....Brown is domiant in eye color. Blue is NOT. This means, that the only gene, for eye color, that your wife can pass to your children is blue. You on the other hand create the mistery in the situation. You might have brown eyes, but what about your parents? Do either of them have lighter eyes? No? How about your grandparents? You see how this could go on forever?

The only way your children will have blue eyes, would be if you pass a gene for light eyes as well. If all you have to pass are brown, then your children will have brown eyes as well. Now the range of brown colors, is pretty much limitless.....so you never know, they might have really light brown eyes, which I think are beautiful! On the other hand....you may have a gene for resissive blue eyes, hidden away in your genetic code for generations. It's possible for your kids to have blue eyes, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

Answer 4

Ok, since you didn't give enough information, I'll give you two. Now, it doesn't matter that her parents have brown eyes, since blue is recessive, so she only has the blue-eyes gene. It depends on your parents. If you carry the recessive blue-eyed gene, then the chance is 2/4. If you don't, then tehre is no chance, but she will carry the gene. There is no way she can't carry the gene, however. So figure it out if you carry it, then you will know.

Answer 5

It depends on whether or not you carry the gene for blue eyes. Brown is a dominant eye color which mean that you can carry the gene for other eye colors while still having brown eyes. Blue eyes one the other hand, or recesive, which means most likely you wife carrys only the gene for blue eyes. If you do carry the gene for blue eyes, your chances are 50% if you do not, they are zero. If one of your parents has blue eyes, then you carry the gene if neither does, then it is very difficult to tell.

Answer 6

I have brown eyes my husband has blue eyes both of my children have brown eyes. My brother has brown eyes my sister has green eyes my other brother has blue eyes my mom has blue my dad had green. on my husbands side they all have blue eyes (5 kids) My sister in law has blue(husbands sister) her husband has brown they have 1 blue eyed child 1 brown eyed child so the answer is in my opinion 50-50

Answer 7

My ex and that i the two have brown eyes. in reality he grew to become into Mexican. Our daughter has blue eyes. The answerer above is fullyyt incorrect...what he gave is an 8th grade text textile e book, uncomplicated, dumbed down explanation. besides the undeniable fact that in the time of actuality genetics are plenty deeper than that, and in actuality comprise any features that are possessed with the help of everybody in that kinfolk for countless generations decrease back. For me my mom had blue eyes and his dad (from Spain) had blue eyes, and with an expertise of genetics, one might comprehend the way we brown eyed human beings ended up with a blue eyed daughter I even have twins with my husband.....the girl have been given his blue eyes and my dark hair and the boy have been given my dark eyes and his easy hair.

Answer 8

well, there's sceanarios, either you have parents with blue eyes, or parents with brown eyes, or one of each.

What is displayed (in this case, eye color), might be displayed by a set of 2 allels... You get one allel from your mother, and one from oyur father.
Brown eyes is a dominant trait, meaning if you got 2 brown eye allel, you'll be brown eyes, if you got one brown, one blue, you'll be brown eyes and be a carrier for blue eyes, if you got blue eyes, then both your allels are for blue eyes. Your wife's parents must've been both carriers for the blue eye allel, with a 25% chance each child to have blue eyes.

Your wife has 2 blue eye allels (since she has blue eyes)

you might be 2 brown eye allel, meaning 0% chance

you might be one brown, 1 blue eye allel, meaning 50% chance

unless you can confirm that your parents are blue eye carriers (ie, someone in your bloodline has blue eyes), by having a blue eyed sibling or grandparent, you can't get more accurate.

Answer 9

*waves hand* I learned this in school. In a nutshell, the colour of your kid's eyes all depends on you. Really.

To explain: In your DNA, there are these things called alleles. Alleles are any possibly forms for a gene to occur. In humans, two alleles per gene are inherited. There are dominant and recessive alleles. Dominant alleles are expressed with a capital letter, and recessive alleles with a lower case letter.

In the case of eye colour, brown eye colour is a dominant allele. If you are a heterozygous regarding your brown eye colour, this means that you inherited a brown allele from one of your parents and a blue allele from the other. Hence, you are Bb. (B for brown. b for blue.) Your wife inherited two blue genes since she has blue eyes. Therefore she is homozygous blue or bb.

So we have:

Bb x bb

The possibilities are:

Bb (brown), Bb(brown), bb(blue), bb(blue).


So therefore, if you are heterozygous brown, you have a 50% chance of having kids with blue eyes. HOWEVER, what happens if you inherited two brown alleles from your parents making you homozygous brown or BB?

Well:

BB x bb

The only possibility is Bb (brown.)

So you can see from this that if you are homozygous brown well, there is no chance of having kids with blue eyes. Sadly.

I hope my explanations was not too confusing. :)

Answer 10

Your wife must be homozygous recessive for blue eyes, if both of her parents have brown ones.

And because you have brown eyes, you must have at least one gene for brown, if not two.

If both your genes are for brown, then your child will very likely have brown eyes. Brown is the dominant gene, and you don't have a recessive blue to throw a monkey wrench into the works.

If, however, you have a recessive gene for blue eyes, then your chances are 50-50.

One cautionary note: this all oversimplified. The genetics of human eye color variation are complicated, there are gradations of colors, etc. But this is the traditional, oversimplified explanation. (It doesn't work for my family, for example, because we all have either green or blue eyes--my husband's side and mine. And you can't just substitute green for brown, because both green and blue are recessive...Anyway, my husband and I both have green eyes, and we ended up with one green-eyed girl and one blue-eyed one.)

Answer 11

I have blue eyes and my ex-husband has brown. My daughter ended up with blue.