This weekend, Harry and Meghan’s Christmas card prompted conversation about both Archie and Lilibet having inherited Harry’s red hair amongst those of us who take interest in such things. Apparently, according to geneticists, the 1-2% of the global population with red hair have it as a result of having parents who both carry red haired genes, given that they’re recessive.
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I wasn’t all that surprised to see both little ones sporting Harry’s hue as I’ve seen similar much closer to home in the children of one of my best friends, Lucy, a woman who has an astonishing head of deep red hair, all rich tones that shimmer, the sort of thing Titian would’ve absolutely begged to paint. Her husband Nick has resolutely brown hair, unnoticeable really, just pleasingly atop his head as a sort of stopping point for his face.
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They have four children, and before the birth of each one I wondered who, if any, would inherit Lucy’s resplendent hair given that neither Nick nor his parents had a whisper of red in theirs. Three of those four children were born with Lucy’s fiery hair and have remained redheads, while the fourth, my goddaughter Martha, emerged into the world with black hair that’s now settled to, in Lucy’s words: “mousey with blonde ends and a few red streaks”.
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I asked Lucy and Nick, both of whom have quite a lot of family, how prevalent red hair is among the rest of their family. I was told that actually their kids carried it the most strongly, with only two of forty cousins having red hair, which seemed quite remarkable to me. What made some kids have red hair and others not?.
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