Mixed-race couple give birth to black and white twins - for the second time

[Blackleaf]

A mixed-race couple, Dean Durrant and Alison Spooner of Fleet, Hampshire, have given birth to black and white twins.

But, incredibly, this is the SECOND time it has happened.

The odds of this happening are half-a-million to one.


Mixed-race couple give birth to black and white twins - for the second time


By Niall Firth
31st December 2008
Daily Mail



A mixed-race couple who had one black and one white twin daughter seven years ago have defied the odds and done it again.

Dean Durrant, 33, and Alison Spooner, 27, beat odds of 500,000 to one to give birth to their second set of twins with different colour skins - Miya has her father's black skin and Leah is white like her mother.

The couple's first set of twins arrived in 2001, with blue-eyed, red-haired Lauren looking just like her mother while Hayleigh has black skin and hair like her father.

Dean Durrant and Alison Spooner (pictured earlier today) beat odds of 500,000-to-one to give birth to their second set of twins


Mr Durrant from Fleet, Hampshire, told the Sun: 'We didn't think it was even possible when we had Lauren and Hayleigh - and it didn't cross our minds that it could happen again. But we are just delighted that it has.'

Ms Spooner added: 'I was shocked when I first found out I was pregnant with twins again - but I never thought for one second they would turn out the same as last time.'

Mixed twins occur when two separate eggs are fertilised by two sperm.

Skin colour is believed to be determined by up to seven different genes working together.

Mum and dad hold their special newborn babies (pictures Sky News)


If a woman is of mixed race, her eggs will usually contain a mixture of genes coding for both black and white skin.

Similarly, a man of mixed race will have a variety of different genes in his sperm.

When these eggs and sperm come together, they will create a baby of mixed race.

But, very occasionally, the egg or sperm might contain genes coding for one skin colour.

If both the egg and sperm contain all white genes, the baby will be white. And if both contain just the versions necessary for black skin, the baby will be black.

Twins Miya and Leah were delivered by Caesarean section at Frimley Park Hospital, in Surrey, at just 37 weeks of pregnancy after scans revealed both babies were breach.

Ms Spooner said: 'After the babies were born they weren't breathing properly, so they were taken to a special care unit.

'It wasn't until about five days after they were born that we saw them side by side for the first time.

'And when they were together it was clear that one was darker than the other. It was unbelievable."

'Now the girls are back home with us and are very healthy. Lauren and Hayleigh think the new arrivals are fantastic.'

dailymail.co.uk

 

[Said1]

OMG, one was darker than the other! Call Ripleys.

 

[JLM]

OMG, one was darker than the other! Call Ripleys.

It doesn't make any difference to those of us who are colour blind.

 

[talloola]

Don't know if I'm totally out of it, or what, but the first two children both look like
mixed race to me, and the mother looks completely white, so a child looking white or one looking black seems quite normal, the explanation talked about
genes from parents who are mixed race, neither of them look mixed.
Twins who are not identical, are no different than siblings born at a different time, they just happen to be born at approx the same time, from same pregnancy.
That story sounds silly.

 

[Spade]

Those who want to see colour, see dye-zygotic twins.
Those who are colour blind, see fraternal twins.

Indeed, a story that says more about the writer and his intended readership...

 

[JLM]

Don't know if I'm totally out of it, or what, but the first two children both look like
mixed race to me, and the mother looks completely white, so a child looking white or one looking black seems quite normal, the explanation talked about
genes from parents who are mixed race, neither of them look mixed.
Twins who are not identical, are no different than siblings born at a different time, they just happen to be born at approx the same time, from same pregnancy.
That story sounds silly.

That was kind of my feeling Talloola, a lot of the time the problem with the news is you are getting that isn't normally news but someone for whatever reason decides to make it "news". Like you say fraternal twins are just like brother and sister and with millions of sets of twins being born every years, things like this are bound to happen sooner or later.

 

[Rockhead]

They should follow their lives and see if the lighter twins do better.

 

[karrie]

That story sounds silly.

A silly story from the Daily Mail? No... couldn't be.

 

[Machjo]

Funny how genes work that way.

 

[Ariadne]

In a way, I wonder why it is so surprising and newsworthy. For example, if a Chinese person and a Caucasian person have children, some are lighter and some are darker, some have the Asian blue tinge to their hair and others have a tinge of Caucasian red in the black hair. Some have dark eyes, some hazel. This sort of thing happens every day. Families can even have children where one is particularly dark or light skinned because of a grandparent. Two sets of dizygotic twins is unusual, but children with skin pigments moreso from one parent than the other is not exactly new.

 

[karrie]

Well, add to that the fact that having fraternal twins if you've already had fraternal twins isn't 'rare'. If you over-ovulate, you over-ovulate, and once the first set proves you do it, the second set is a lot more likely.

 

[Ariadne]

There you go ... having mixed race children with different skin pigments and more than one set of dizygotic twins is not that unusual at all.

 

[Nuggler]

Don't know if I'm totally out of it, or what, but the first two children both look like
mixed race to me, and the mother looks completely white, so a child looking white or one looking black seems quite normal, the explanation talked about
genes from parents who are mixed race, neither of them look mixed.
Twins who are not identical, are no different than siblings born at a different time, they just happen to be born at approx the same time, from same pregnancy.
That story sounds silly.

Must have been a slow news day, Talloola: Now if they were black and white as in Holstein..or Zebra.......there's some news!!8O

 

[earth_as_one]

Gee children who look more like one parent than the other. That's amazing!

BTW, skin pigment based race classification has been thoroughly discredited by human genome related research and discoveries. While skin pigmentation might be useful for visually identifying someone (like height and eye color), the common practice of attributing race, traits, characteristics, behaviors... based on skin color is a form of outdated scientific quackery like Astrology.

There is only one human race.

...DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity...
Minorities and Genomics: Issues of Race

What is Race? When some people use the "race" they attach a biological meaning, still others use "race" as a socially constructed concept. It is clear that even though race does not have a biological meaning, it does have a social meaning which has been legally constructed....

...There are no genetic characteristics possessed by all Blacks but not by non- Blacks; similarly, there is no gene or cluster of genes common to all Whites but not to non-Whites. One's race is not determined by a single gene or gene cluster, as is, for example, sickle cell anemia. Nor are races marked by important differences in gene frequencies, the rates of appearance of certain gene types. The data compiled by various scientists demonstrates, contrary to popular opinion, that intra-group differences exceed inter-group differences. That is, greater genetic variation exists within the populations typically labeled Black and White than between these populations. This finding refutes the supposition that racial divisions reflect fundamental genetic differences.

Notice this does not mean that individuals are genetically indistinguishable from each other, or even that small population groups cannot be genetically differentiated. Small populations, for example the Xhosa or the Basques, share similar gene frequencies. However, differentiation is a function of separation, usually geographic, and occurs in gradations rather than across fractures.. .. . . The notion that humankind can be divided along White, Black, and Yellow lines reveals the social rather than the scientific origin of race. The idea that there exist three races, and that these races are "Caucasoid," "Negroid," and "Mongoloid," is rooted in the European imagination of the Middle Ages...

What is Race?

 

[Trotz]

Human is a social construct as much as race is. Hey maybe life is a social construct too? Maye it's something we're imagining in our heads? Ahh, those humanities-sociology professors are so enlightening

Nevertheless, especially when someone is pushing an agenda that is just 20 years old, I'm more trusting of Phrenology, Crainometry and phenotype-anthropology which otherwise had the scientific methods of determining for the past 200 and more years.

Religion in the past may had been another identification of race, even when the Oriental Orthodox in Syria converted to Catholicism they were still treated as Heathens (non-believers), even though they had the same culture as the Outremer (Europeans who settled in the near east and became Arabicized in culture).