Many expecting mothers wonder what their future child will look like: what color his eyes will be, how tall he will grow, how he will style his hair. They often assume, however, that their child will look similar to them in skin tone. This mother had expected this to be the case for her unborn son, but she couldn’t have been more wrong.
When Catherine Howarth first saw her son, Jonah, she was completely confused. She had a good reason – he was an entirely different skin color than her! Catherine is a black woman with Nigerian heritage. She has dark skin, and no one that she knows of in her lineage has been with a white person. Jonah, however, is a white baby.
The boy takes after his father, Richard. Richard is a white man with light brown hair. His son looks just like him in skin tone! When Jonah was first born, doctors wondered how this could be.
After much thought, they realized that Catherine must have white ancestors at some point in her lineage. A baby’s skin color is determined by many different combinations of genes. Genetic expert Dr. Emily Grossman compared the phenomenon to that of a child’s eye color. Since the baby receives one gene from each of his parents for his eye color, there are four different possibilities. Skin color is even more complex. The baby pulls many genes from each of his parents, resulting in nearly infinite possibilities for a mixed race baby like Jonah.
According to Dr. Grossman, the chance of Jonah being born with white skin was one in a million! He’s certainly a rare baby, and he has already found a place in the modeling world. Catherine explained that people stop to admire her son all the time. “He loves the attention,” she shared.
Catherine admitted that when she is alone with Jonah in public, people often wonder whether the baby is hers. “We get so much attention just walking down the street,” she said. “We always get stopped by people.” When asked if she minded all the questions, the mother laughed and said “not at all.”
This mother and son may not look alike in skin tone, but they already have undying love for one another. “I fell in love with him instantly,” Catherine remembered. Jonah has a bright future ahead of him, and the two have many future memories to share.
This cute story goes to show that love is much more than skin deep. Catherine’s adoration for her baby is a model to mothers everywhere.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
