Question of the Week: What traits do you see being passed from generation to generation in your family?

Question

What sorts of traits do you see being passed from generation to generation in your family? 

PS Reshare the question on Facebook to get your family and friends talking.

Comments

That's very interesting--supports what I'm saying. Lots of people have the downturned U mouth---but have no idea they have any Asian or Indigenous blood--& it may not even show-up in their DNA if at conception those ancestors' DNA wasn't pulled from.

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There is a trace amount of Amerindian and Sami in my DNA.

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• My great-grandfather died from a "stomach problem".
• My paternal grandfather died from abdominal cancer.
• My father suffered from "heartburn"
• I had heartburn and GERDS until it was treated.
• My son has heartburn and lactose intolerance (inherited from his mother).

And I inherited my paternal grandmother's long eye lashes.

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I also have a severe lactose intolerance. And in the last year and a half or so I found I am very sensitive to both brewers and bakers yeast (which is in everything). I knew I had an additional issue since I would be careful and it didn't matter. I have to be very selective as to what I eat.

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So do you or any of your elders, Laura (Morin) have the down-turned mouths, or not? : )

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Yes, unfortunately, I do. And so does my mother, both of her sisters and my female cousins.  It is a very common trait of the women on my maternal side. I can trace it back to my 4th GGM, Dorcas Hyatt Traywick.

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Question to Laura.  Is it greatly downturned?  I had to actually check for my downturn.  But it is there. I guess we just have to smile a lot. Which I guess I do anyway.

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it's All good....we are unique w/ our down-turned mouths : )

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Linda, it is down turned enough that it's quite noticeable. When my face is "resting" it makes me look like I'm mad all the time.  When I smile, my smile is straight instead of up turned like most. 

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Just remember you smile with your whole face like  your eyes and your cheeks and your personality. Like I saId I never even noticed at all mine are downturned but they clearly are. And I have never once noticed anyone elses are. But I am going to check now to see out of curiosity.  I would say most people but us would not notice.

Answer 1

While speaking with a cousin recently, and learned that her relatives and I all share the same malady: bad knees. 

Answer 2

My Son and his Wife just had their second Child with thirteen years between the first, and the second. My new Grandson has my cleft chin, and face dimples, which has been passed on from my Grandfather, my Mom, and myself. He has dark hair, where mine is strawberry blond (Ginger), although he has a full head of hair like my Mann Family. My Grandmother passed the MC1R to my Aunt, and Dad. My Father passed the gene to one of my Sisters, and myself. I have four Children, two with dark brown hair,two with light blond hair, but no ginger MC1R gene. I have twelve Grandchildren, five have dark brown hair,four with dark blond hair, two with very light blond hair, and only my oldest Granddaughter has Ginger hair color like mine.

 

Answer 3

Strong convictions and very creative. I believe it is my Viking heritage!

Answer 4

Auburn hair, every second generation like clockwork. It comes from the strong Irish maternal line, I believe.

The only thing I inherited from my father was bad teeth, and a quarter of a million bucks.

Answer 5

I think me, my mom, my grandma and my great-grandma all have my great-great-grandma's eyes. It just gets passed down in my maternal lineage. If I have a daughter one day, I'll expect her to have our eyes!

And also brown and blonde hair from my maternal grandpa's lines. Both my dad and my maternal grandma had black hair, but I have brown hair and my brother is blonde. Same with my mom and her brother, she's brown haired and her brother is blonde.

Also my maternal grandpa's nose. He has a very "boring" but nice standard nose (as my friends called it) and we all inherited it lol

Answer 6

These traits are seen pretty much across the board

• Being tall and thin.
• Freakishly long torso and short legs (I think this is maternal)
• Long toes on my maternal side. My uncle refers to them as "McBride toes".
• Dental issues (hypoplasia, crowding). We also seem to have huge front teeth.
• Longevity - multiple people living 90-100+ on paternal side, and with all their mental faculties intact. This hopefully counteracts the tendency for early death on my maternal side.
• Asthma
• Myopia and astigmatism
• Natural athletic ability
• High IQ with a preference for STEM fields
• Non-neurotypical on the paternal side with intergenerational ADHD, and people suspect many of the paternal males are on the spectrum. 
• Language learning disabilities in males where despite testing with really high IQ they fall behind in school without extra support. 
• Red-green color blindness. 
• Anxiety disorders and depression
• Sneezing after dinner at restaurants, every time without exception. This is an actual intergenerational thing on my maternal grandfather's side, and not learned. My mother did not grow up with her father. When she met her father and 1/2 brother later they found they had this incommon. It only happens while eating out, never at home. Very strange!
• Thick hair
• Restless legs syndrome - I hope I never experience this. My mother and grandmother had it. My sister has had it at least since her 30s. It sounds AWFUL.
• Very high cholesterol, especially after menopause for women. I'm talking 400+ that does not respond well to dietary changes. Also hope I do not get this!
• Musical talent on maternal grandmother's side, extending far into my DNA cousins. My favorite discovery was the guy who is a professional butler/personal estate manager by day and in a Kiss cover band by night. :D
• Paternal side has a lot of loud sneezers.
• Motion sickness

Comments

I have RLS and it is awful.

Answer 7

On my mother's side (females): 

• Height deprived or Unusually Untall (except me, I'm 5'9")
• Well fed (Been too skinny all my life until the dreaded Thyroid stopped working last year)
• Diabetes or Hypoglycemic (I'm neither)

Now I know why my older sister told me mom found me on the side of the road when we were younger (luv ya sis)

Comments

My oldest daughter says she is 'vertically challenged.' Another trait is a quarter-sized spot in the back of the head where there is either no hair, or it has no pigment and cannot be dyed. Only in the females.

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All my paternal aunts were about 5', my grandmother was 4' 8".  My dad was 5' 6" and I come in as a relatively tall 5' 1". Vertically challenged indeed.

Answer 8

We're all tall--though shorter than my grandfather's generation and have lungs subject to disease on both sides of the family (cancer, tuberculosis, emphysema, COPD)--even among the non-smokers.  Pernicious anemia seems prevalent also (typical in central and northern Europeans).  My mother's side also shares the same strong jaw line and deep-set eyes (possibly Marfan's Syndrome though not officially diagnosed).

Does stubbornness count as a trait?

Answer 9

High foreheads (but not baldness) on the male side. I have the body shape of my paternal grandfather.

Answer 10

An Anatolian Bump

I have several inherited family traits, including Raynaud's and a double crown in the hair of males, i.e., my father, his father and one of my sons.

But an Anatolian Bump seems to be the most interesting trait I have, which comes from the family of my maternal grandparents. Below are some links describing it.

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/25837-Do-you-have-an-Anatolian-bump-at-the-back-of-your-head

https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/melungeon/439/

To find this bump, place two fingers on your neck below where it meets your skull. Run your fingers up toward your scalp. If your fingers stop at a ridge at the base of your skull, you have an Anatolian Bump.

This doesn't mean I am Turkish, but it has been found there frequently. In Sweeden it would be considered to be a sign that I am of Walloon descent. In the US, many people of Melungeon descent have this trait. For this, and other reasons, I suspect that i may have a Melungeon ancestor.

http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~mtnties/physical.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melungeon

Comments

How interesting Bill. I hadn't heard of that - thank you for sharing!

Answer 11

Big ears that stick out.  My brother had them, his son and grandson.  One of my grandsons has them and then the other day I was searching Familysearch and I came across a picture of a George Washington Woodul, this man could not be my great great-grandfather because of the date, but he was definitely related.  To my surprise he had the same ears.

Answer 12

My mother, grandmother and greatgrandmother had drooping cheekes..... and now I discover I am getting them too. I am against plastic surgery for beauty but my weak spot would be those cheeks. I hate them.

Answer 13

Many things seems to be heritable (some of which I won't disclose here, LOL!). 

One of my favourites is the 'Gormly chin'. Basically a cleft chin that has been passed down from my grandfather from my mother to me, and now to my young son (my daughter didn't inherit it though). My grandfather is said to resemble his mother more so than his father, so maybe it should be the 'Pratt chin' instead. 

Genetics is fascinating. Probably even more fascinating is the field of epigenetics, which looks at how our environment can influence whether certain genes are expressed, i.e. if they get switched on or off.

Answer 14

Height, a love for psychology, my eyebrows, and bad knees

Answer 15

Height seems to be one trait passed on from both sides of my family, although not in everybody.  My height is 6'3", my dad was 6' and my mom's father was about this height.  I think from photos my dad's maternal grandfather also stood 6'.  I have one maternal first cousin who also stands 6'3" and in the next generation forward on both sides of my family there are young adults, one maybe 6'5" if I remember correctly, and another at 6'8".  My maternal grandmother had an aunt about 6' tall who was very artistic, and wrote poetry and music.  Going back to the Revolutionary War, one of my ancestors, John Sharp (a Loyalist) reportedly stood 6' tall, well above any other man in his group of soldiers.

Another trait seems to be posture - at least from my maternal grandfather to me!

As others note, high IQ also seems to be present on both sides of my family, even though we have very rural roots and a lot of farm families in my ancestry.  But we also have doctors, lawyers, and school principals among the close relatives.

Lastly, an artistic bent seems prevalent among my ancestors and relatives, which I have fortunately inherited.

Answer 16

My mother's father, uncle, and grandfather (at least) had von Willebrand disease. 2 of her siblings died of it in childhood. Her father was the first to receive formal medical diagnosis and treatment, as it was first identified about the time his children were born. .  We have no known recurrence, although I was taken to specialists as a child.  Even then, it had not been diagnosed in women, although the others I mentioned clearly had the expected symptoms.

Answer 17

Everyone in my late wife's family developed diabetes.  Her ex and his brothers died of Alzheimer's.

Answer 18

dark hair color, dark eyes, heart disease, diabetis.

Answer 19

Longevity.  Even as far back as the 1600s, my Frost line was living into their 80s, and occasionally their 90s.   My mother was 93, her mother and aunt and three of her five sisters were in their 90s, I am 84 and have no life-threatening illness.

Answer 20

Migraines! 5 generations on my mother's side. We should be studied. It started with my grandmother's Uncle, then my grandma, then my mom & all of her siblings, then me and all of my cousins, now many of our children have them too. At least we all support and understand each other in this illness.

Comments

I feel for this one.   My Father, My Brother, Me and My son, he has chronic continuous migraine, he can not function at all without strong medicated painkillers.   

I seem to be the only female to inherit debilitating migraine, not my sisters or my daughter.

And Migraine MORE THAN JUST A HEADACHE - severe nausea and super sensitivity to light and smell.   For me 2 to 3 days of severe debilitating discomfort have to have time off work, then all better and I go back to work and have workers feel that I was having a few days off.