During those nine long months you spend waiting to meet your baby for the first time, it’s fun to speculate about what your little one will look like. 

Will they be a living, breathing example of the “mom genes go crazy” TikTok trend — aka your mini-me? Perhaps you’ve even plugged your wedding photos into an AI predictor tool to get a sneak peek at your little one’s mug. 

The truth is, no person (or computer!) can predict what your baby will look like before they are born. 

Here’s why genetics experts say you shouldn’t buy the hype about one parent having “dominant genes” or certain features being all but guaranteed to show up in your baby. 

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Key Takeaways
  • There is no way to accurately predict what your baby will look like before birth. 
  • One parent's genes do not get passed down in a stronger way than the other parent's genes do. 
  • Some traits are "dominant" and more likely to be visibly passed down, while others are "recessive" or less likely to appear physically. 

Can one parent’s genes really dominate?

Despite what it may look like on TikTok, one parent’s genes do not get passed down in a stronger way than the other parent’s genes do. Every human inherits 50% of their DNA from each parent. But whether or not that DNA winds up being “expressed” — by showing up as blonde hair or brown eyes, for example — depends on a lot of very complex factors. 

Let’s go back to high school biology class for the basics. Some traits are “dominant,” which means they may be more likely to be visibly passed down from one generation to the next, while others are recessive, or less likely to be visibly passed down. 

“In dominant conditions, the trait that's dominant only needs to be present on one copy [of DNA] in order for that trait to be expressed, whereas for recessive traits, they need to be present on both copies in order for that trait to be expressed,” says Dallas Reed, M.D., a board-certified OB/GYN and medical geneticist at Myriad Genetics. 

These are some examples of dominant and recessive traits: 

Dominant traits: 

  • brown or black hair

  • widow's peak or V-shaped point at the hairline

  • curly or wavy hair

  • long eyelashes

  • cleft chin

  • Dimples

  • attached earlobes

  • Freckles

  • darker skin tones

Recessive traits: 

Here’s where things get even more unpredictable: You may have a dominant trait, but that doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to pass down to your baby. 

For example, if Dad has a cleft chin, which is a dominant trait, he may still have a recessive gene for a smooth chin. If Dad passes on that smooth-chinned gene, and the baby also gets a smooth-chinned gene from mom, then the little one will end up with a smooth chin.

“His child really has a chance of having a cleft chin since they would be equally liable to get the cleft or the masked smooth chin gene from Dad,” says Joseph Wiemels, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Southern California’s Center for Genetic Epidemiology. Then the mom’s genes would come into play, too. 

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There is no way to know if a child will look exactly like one parent, exactly like their sibling, or exactly like a combination of the two parents.

Dallas Reed, M.D., a board-certified OB/GYN and medical geneticist at Myriad Genetics.

If your first child looks like mom, does that mean your second baby will, too? 

Nope, not necessarily. Biological children share 50% of their DNA with each of the birth parents, but given the sheer unpredictability of genes, many gene combinations are possible and there’s endless room for variation, Dr. Reed says. “Each time you have a child, the outcome [of their appearance] is independent of previous outcomes.”

“Due to the different mix of genes that make up your appearance and the random nature of how those traits are passed on to your children, there is no way to know if a child will look exactly like one parent, exactly like their sibling, or exactly like a combination of the two parents,” Dr. Reed explains. 

This is because most appearance traits are “polygenic,” meaning they’re controlled by several gene products, rather than just a single gene, Dr. Wiemels explains. 

Remember, your baby has a 50-50 chance of receiving any gene variant, but dominance and recessiveness play a part in how that gene is expressed. You or your partner might not have a specific appearance trait, but it’s possible you still carry the gene for it, Dr. Reed says. 

Genes can remain recessive for generations, which is why a child sometimes looks more like a grandparent than a parent, or you end up with a blue-eyed baby without any recent blue-eyed relatives. 

Is there any way to accurately predict what your baby will look like?

Unfortunately, no. There is no way to accurately predict what your baby will look like before birth, Dr. Reed says. 

While it can be fun to guess, Dr. Wiemels seconds this notion, explaining that “any prediction based on observable traits of the parents would be very inexact.”

High-tech 3D and 8K ultrasounds can offer a wildly realistic sneak peek. Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait until the big reveal when your babe is ready to (literally) make their appearance into the world. 

Then, once your baby is here, it’s still nearly impossible to predict what they will look like in the years to come. AI tools will claim they can show you what your baby will look like as a toddler, child, pre-teen, and young adult, but in reality, the environment in which a child is raised also plays a role, explains Dr. Reed. For example, genetic factors certainly influence traits like height and weight, but environmental aspects like nutrition and overall health of the child can also make an impact on their overall appearance. 

Ultimately, there is no perfect way or science-baked tool to predict what your baby will look like before they are born, or how their features will change as they grow up.