Is she my sister or not?

My three children are mixed race and all quite obviously so the eldest s partner had pale skin, dark hair and hazel eyes the two children :-the first is olive skinned, blue eyed, blond curly hair, the second has very pale skin, dark curly hair and brown eyes. Second child married to a blonde with blue eyes has two children girl olive skin, blue eyes, straight blonde hair second paler skin, very tight curly blond hair and blue eyes Last married to a pale skinned hazel eyed man with mid brown hair has three children all olive skinned curly dark hair and brown eyes
Why on earth worry she’s your sister be glad you ve got one I wish I had genetics is fascinating if I had my life over I d love to do some anthropology/genetic type studies

DNA and blood don’t make her your sister. Once we’re adults you get to choose your family.

But, I will tell you that I have 3 sisters. We have two with blue eyes, one with hazel and one with dark brown.

I’m pale as pale can be, my older sister tans beautifully. My younger sister is red hair and covered in freckles.

Genetics!

Thank you all, sadly, nanaandgrampy the opposite is true. There was no love at all growing up between parents or children. As an adult, I was not allowed to phone or visit whilst my sister was visiting or staying with my parents. I suppose the brutal truth is I WANT her to not be my sister, there is more to all this than I can relate here. I am sorry to have troubled you all but am very grateful for your input.

Celeste21, hugs to you. I’m sorry you went through that.

The good news is that you do get to decided whom is your family and not. If you want her to not be your sister you can do that. Move on happily and don’t give her another thought.

Enjoy your life and make yourself happy.

If they carried a brown eyed gene , that is genetically dominant. Therefore offspring would be brown eyed .
If in doubt , take a DNA test. Cheap and easily available, if you really want to know .
However, family is more than Gene's/ parentage . X

The different looks could be a throwback, maybe from grandparents or great grandparents.

Gene's are strange things. A child can inherit the Gene's of a grandparent or even a great grandparent. My youngest son is blonde and blue eyed. Myself and his dad have dark brown hair and brown eyes. Even more strange is he is the spitting image of my brother.

Myself and 2 brothers are also very different. Eldest brother, blue eyes, red hair, middle brother, blonde and blue eyed, me, dark brown hair, brown eyes. My dad brown hair, brown eyes, my mum, brown hair, blue eyes. No idea where the red or blonde came from.

DH's cousin had five children. Two were dark haired, brown eyed and typically Italian looking like their mother, two were blonde and blue eyed like their father, and one was ginger and freckled and didn't look like either parent.

Does it matter? You grew up together as sisters.

What’s your reason for wondering?

I’ve always felt so sad for sibling who refer to one as “half- sibling” or “adopted sibling” as though they are somehow less

I believe that it is two blue eyed parents who cannot have a brown eyed child.
Any other combination is possible .

Hair colour & texture also just a case of what comes out of the hereditary gene pool.

A DNA test might prove it.

I always think you can see something relevant to your family in their looks. Mine all looked like little dormice when asleep.
One of my sons has a child with an ex. He looks nothing like our family, hair and skin totally different. I always had my doubts although son accepted him. We will probably never see him again.

No, that is not true Bridgeit

It can occur (see my earlier posts and that of others).
One of my colleagues explained this all to us, with charts, many years ago.

One of my sons has a child with an ex. He looks nothing like our family, hair and skin totally different. I always had my doubts although son accepted him. We will probably never see him again.

Why would you want to? It certainly doesn’t sound is that you Accepted him

Blue eyed parents CAN have a brown eyed child

I think that this has nothing to do with eye colour.
It is about estrangement and perhaps you coild seek some advice and help on an estrangement thread, Celeste.

Not so long since I posted a photo of a couple who'd just had twins. One was fair and blonde, the other very dark indeed; skin as well as hair colour.

We are now beginning to learn about genetics and how our ancestors can pop up unexpectedly in subsequent generations.

My mother, father and sister were all thin. I was not.

My maternal grandmother weighed 25 stone (158 kilo - 350 lb) an active farmer always on the go (in the days before farms were mechanised) until her death in her late 70's.

My MIL had hazel eyes, FIL had bright blue ones. Of their seven (!) children, three had bright blue eyes and four had quite dark brown ones. Hazel does work weirdly.

My mother had grey eyes, my father and I have green ones, and my sister has hazel.

When my mother died I was sorting out her possessions and found a photo of her paternal grandmother. She must have died before I was born as I have no memory of her.
For some odd reason I stuck it on my dressing table, then realised that my youngest granddaughter is her spitting image.Same shape face and features. I looked like my father's family, the only bodily thing I got from my mother is her bad feet.Yet my son has a daughter who strongly resembles her paternal GGG grandmother so certain genes lie dormant in you until they suddenly surface in one of your descendants.

The only thing I'm pretty sure of re eye colour, is that two blue eyed parents can only produce blue eyed children. IIRC that's because the blue eyed gene is recssive, but if two recessive genes meet, they become dominant.

My younger dd has skin (though not eye) colour quite unlike anyone else in the family - sort of creamy-olive Mediterranean type. There have never been any remarks about the milkman, though! - since she has exactly the same shape nose as dh - luckily nice neat little shape!

I swear there's some washed-up Armada sailor there somewhere - I have GGparents from both coastal Devon and coastal Suffolk.

two blue eyed parents can only produce blue eyed children
That is simply not true Witzend.
If you read the thread you will see others, including me, explaining that it is possible for two blue eyed parents to produce brown eyed children plus one poster has provided a chart.

My college was a biologist/DNA expert who had studied genetics extensively and she showed us about 20 years ago that this was untrue.

Colleague - sorry, self corrected.

Take a look at photographs of relative's, in my mother's family there is always a couple who look like they don't belong . Dark hair,dark skin,blue eyes, tall always female. The rest are blonde/red hair range from just over 5ft to 6ft 8in we were on till 50years ago coastal people so used to get a injection of bombastic blood every now and then

Too much notice is taken of the Mendelian eye colour theory, it can lead to some very cruel comments. Huge amount of scientific proof, but as Monica says there is the instances of a throw back to earlier ancestors.

I believe this is quite well known in families who have a history of the British Raj in India. At the beginning of the Raj it was rare for British women to go with their husbands. Hence the sahibs took up with local women and entered the gene pool. It caused a lot of trouble when the memsahibs started arriving!shins

My DDiL who has dark curly hair and blue eyes and some Carribean ancestry. My D S has brown hair and brown eyes. When she was pregnant she suddenly asked me if I minded a throw back!!! Of course not. My DGD is a blue eyed blonde!