Why have I got blonde hair and no one else in my family has?

[Mincepiesforeyes]

I had white blonde hair as a child, now it’s still very light as an adult. I occasionally highlight it, but it’s still blonde without dye.

No one in my family has blonde hair ! I honestly thought I was adopted as a child.
My mum had very dark hair (now grey), my dad the same, almost jet black in wedding photos of them. My brother has very dark brown hair. My maternal grandmother had naturally jet black hair, my maternal grandfather had dark hair, my paternal grandmother had auburn hair and my paternal grandfather had dark brown hair too!

How does this work?!
My son takes after me with white blonde hair though.

Those Vikings really got around.

My parents are both dark haired, olive skinned. My sister has the same kind of colouring - really olive skin, dark hair, tans in 30 seconds, people on holiday in Corfu spoke Greek to her as they assumed she was a local. I look like if historians had to put an e-fit of a stereotypical Celt woman together, see-through pale skin, freckles, red(ish, now I'm older) hair, burn on a walk on a cloudy day in October if I'm not wearing SPF30 on my face.

Dunno how we happened genetically, but genetics are weird!

I am a natural blonde too, and we think it passed down through my Dads side (his Dad and aunt were very fair-haired). He is blonde and has retained his colour into his sixties. My hair is still still very blonde, even more so in summer. However my sister started off with the same colour, but hers has darkened into a mousey brown as she has gotten older (we are both in our 30s).

Everyone on my Mums side are brunettes or redheads.

DH is fully Indian (I’m only half, and half Romany) but he has so many blondes in the family while I don’t have any. It’s just a regressive gene.

@Landof

Well either your mum had an affair. Or. More logically. It's genetics and how they work. Haha.

@Landof

Well either your mum had an affair. Or. More logically. It's genetics and how they work. Haha.

@longwayoff

Those Vikings really got around.

Even ancient Greeks had the odd blond child (Helena of Troy anyone?)
Seemingly random blondness is a thing, it happens in lots of ethnicities.

Think of it as having two sets of instructions: one says "paint that hair dark dark dark", the other says "just a light coat of almost white yellow".
The dark overrides the light, you don't see it.

But if you mix and match the sets of instructions (by having kids, who gets hala of the instructions from each parent), eventually you'll get all possible combinations, including two sets of "light coat", and the hidden blonde gene becomes visible, because it doesn't get "painted over" by the darker one.

The odds are 1 out of 4, if both parents have a hidden (recessive) gene, so not that rare, but can easily remain hidden for a few generations if people only have a handful of kids.