No money for it at the moment, but I think my chances are pretty high ;)

I believe you might also have a redheaded baby as an exercise of pure will. That was the case with my ginger baby girl, and her brunette mother. ;-)

I study genetics and human evolution as my degree.. I would say this before ordering the test kit.. first of all look back through your boyfriends family photos and talk to people and ask if there were any redhead family members.. Ideally through great great parental lines or even aunts of theirs..

Then there will be a 1 in 4 babies chance that you will have a red head child.. This is rough as nothing is ever sure with genetics, many "genetic events" can happen where things get mixed up a bit, why we are all so wonderfully different :-D... Genetic material can never be destroyed if it is inherited only stored and not used.. is the best way I can describe it.. so someone may inherit the genetic material to be a redhead.. however if there are more brown haired material brown hair wins ( most of the time)

If there are no Gingers in the family of your boyfriend.. it is nigh on impossible for the child to be redheaded.. Because unfortunately, redhead genes are not dominant, they are recessive and any old floozy hair colour can come along and take over... for a baby to have red hair it must have MCR1 from both parents, as the body classes red hair as defective mutagen DNA and replaces it with non mutated.. brown, black etc..

Peaceeee

I have two redheaded kids from my brunette first wife, and a dirty blond son from my strawberry blond second wife. So it's a crap shoot. My mother was blond and my father had jet black hair but his mother was a red. So, it's all a matter of chance.

80% of white northern Europeans carry the gene but we only make up 1% of the population. So it's a lottery issue.

Good luck!
-Æ

80% eh? I didn't know that. Like your example points out it is strange how it works out when a redhead does come along.

My mom (brunette) has 3 other siblings with children, two redhead sisters and a brunette brother. My mom and her brother have redheaded children and her redheaded sisters have a bunch of blonde children! Haha, like you said to a certain point its just up to chance.

last year I went to this seminar in Breda.. a dermatologist or sumt'n. telling us Gilles de la tourette is related to, and for as far as he knew, MC1R. appearantly also a genetic mutation located on the same place of the coil als where the recessive gene lays which determines your red hair colour. He said there where close relations between the two. even the chances of people with tourettes have realistic chances of deliver next generations of redheads. this may explain why a lot of my ginger friends have tourettes.

I also did a minor in genetics, and i shall try and answer this as best i can (although it looks pretty covered already)
I posted this in reply to another forum, so if it looks like youve seen it before, you probably have.
If you express red hair, anywhere, you have some varient of the "redhead"gene. Most people associate red hair with the gene MC1R which is passed from generation to generation in a pattern that is described as an autosomal recessive mode of inheritance (although, it is believed that other gene variants are present as well). Simply put, this means that you get one copy from mum, one from dad and you end up with red hair. The MC1R gene is on chromosome 16, (not on the X or Y chorosome) and therefore gender play no role in the expression. Now here comes the science- the gene itself is made up of multiple alleles, and it is postulated that alleles Arg151Cys, Arg160Trp, Asp294His, and Arg142His play a role in the expression of the red pigment. However, it is the combination of the expression of these alleles that gives the over all phenotype (appearance). This is why, no two redheads (except identical twins) have the exact same skin colour, hair colour, freckle pattern, eye colour etc. Now, take into account that you can also have "random genetic mutation" and can end up with all sorts of unique attributes as a result.

Now, as i said, you need TWO copies of the gene in order for it to be expressed. Hair colour depends on what is called a dominant trait. Red hair, is recessive- therefore it can be easily hidden. If your child inherits a gene for red hair from you (which since you are a redhead this is the ONLY gene you can give) but a gene for dark hair from your partner, the gene for dark hair will mask the gene for red hair, and your child will have dark hair. (your child will be a CARRIER, which means that they may go on to produce red haired children them self one day, depending on their mate). Alternatively, even if your partner does not express red hair, he may be a carrier (as gem said, look at his family tree to give you a better clue). If he is a carrier, there is a 50% chance that he will pass on his redhair gene to your child- which when combined with the red har gene from you will result in a redheaded child.

hopefully that makes sense. I will try and use a diagram to explain further. In this simplified example, we will only consider one scenario. Say that
B=brown hair gene
b=red hair gene

Now, as i said, there are 2 copies of this gene in each person. The possible combinations are as follows (with the persons appearance in parenthesis) : BB (brown hair) Bb(brown hair) bb(red hair)

Now, what happens when they combine...Each combination of letters represents one parent. Each parent can give only one letter to their offspring.
BB x bb= Bb (all possible outcomes are this. therefore all possible children will be carriers of the red hair gene but will not appear as red heads)

Bb x bb= Bb (expresses as brown hair, carriers of red hair gene) and bb (redheads) In this situation, there is a 50% chance of red hair expression

bb x bb= bb (all offspring will be redheads)

Bb x Bb= 25% chance of red hair expression
Needless to say, it can get pretty complicated. Hopefully this has been somewhat helpful! (try googling punnet squares to better understand these "diagrams)"

I should also say, neither of my parents have red hair, and here i am :) Likely, they are both carriers, and i beat the odds and ended up as my gingertastic self. :)

i am a ginger guy,i have ginger and red hair running through my family through a few generations from my knowledge becuase i mostly come from northern european descent.

but i would like to ask you what if you had a redhead boy?
it should'nt be all about redhead girls all the time,