2026, Family, Kids, Uncategorized

Family Resemblances

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It has been nice since moving to our new town to run into people I remember from growing up here. One comment I hear from many people is “You sure look like your mother!” That sits ok with me, although I hope their memories of her are from decades before she died at age 91. I know the move has taken its toll, but I hope I don’t look ancient.

A photo of me at age one year shows me looking a lot like my dad. As I aged, my face grew less round and more elongated. Now I look like my mother’s side of the family, especially my Hamburg great grandmother’s family. The women were tall. My mother’s mother was 6 feet tall. My dad was several inches shorter than my mom, and I hit the mean in between their heights.

Our children look like my side of the family, but with Husband’s curly hair. Flat feet run in both my and Husband’s families. Both our children inherited that. Both are tall (Daughter is 6’1”, and Son is 6’4″). Our grandchildren resemble their East Indian mother, although both are going to be quite tall. Son lamented that he looks like the 16th century Dutch guys in the paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Sometimes you can’t escape your genetics.

Who do you look like? What traits have you inherited?

33 thoughts on “Family Resemblances”

  1. I suppose I look more like my Dad than I do my Mom, who had a different face shape and different coloring but I really can’t judge resemblance in people I know well. They just look like themselves. I can see family traits in groups of strangers and when I was growing up in Robbinsdale it was still enough of a small town that I could often recognize members of certain family dynasties that I hadn’t met previously.

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        1. It’s likely that I’ve been hacked too. Please let me know if I start sending out garbage. I haven’t heard anything so far and I changed my Microsoft password (the only way I could figure out how to change my Outlook password was by changing my whole Microsoft account password).

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  3. I think I look more than my mom’s side of the family, but height was from dad’s side – 5’6″ at my zenith. My sister got the Sterling short-in-height gene, and is around 5’2″… she also looks more like dad’s side. But we’re mostly Scandinavian any way you cut it… blond (as kids anyway) hair and blue eyes.

    We both inherited some musical ability from mom’s side… likely got my love for dancing there too. My dad was an athlete, very coordinated, so we may have got something there, too.

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  4. The family resemblance thing is strong on my dad’s side. We got a print of my great grandfather’s wedding portrait from my grandmother years ago that was the image of my brother. It was kind of scary.

    I remember coming to my grandmother’s funeral from DC years later and being directed to join the family immediately.

    The other resemblance thing is that while neither of my paternal grandparents was left-handed, in each of the 5 families of grandchildren, one child is left-handed. The oldest in each family, except in mine where it’s my youngest brother.

    I must be a carrier of the gene, as the s&h is very much a lefty.

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  5. I got the tall genes from Mom’s side of the family. I think I’m the tallest of all my cousins from both sides. Years ago, I saw a picture my maternal grandmother had of her late 19th century ancestors, and I bore a remarkable resemblance to “Uncle Will.” Not sure if he was an uncle of grandma’s, but I’m definitely half-Anderson.

    My wife says I look more like my dad every day. Weird because I have a long face and a high forehead, and he doesn’t—well, maybe a moderately high forehead. But there’s enough resemblance in the mouth, jaw, and chin that she’s right. He’s also short and getting shorter by the year. Started at 5’7″ at full height, and now he seems no taller than my wife, who claims she’s still 5’3. I think she has shrunk an inch in the last 10 years.

    I got frugality from Mom, brains from Dad (mostly). Mom was pretty smart too, just not book-learning smart. Got my love of music and books from both. Athletic talent, such that it is, from Dad.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. Husband’s family has a left handed gene. He is a lefty, as was his dad. Our children and our grandson are righties. I think granddaughter will be too, but she is only 6 months old.

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  7. As a youngster, I thought I looked more like my dad. But over the years I began to resemble my mom more and more. Now when I look in the mirror I see her (except for my nose which is definitely Dad’s). My maternal grandfather was considered a “black” Swede – dark hair and brown eyes. I inherited the brown eyes. He was over 6 feet tall but my maternal grandmother was barely over 5 feet – I got her height genes. Of the 18 cousins on that side of the family I am the runt. I inherited Mom’s hair – thin, fine textured, and stick straight. I’m not happy about that but she did not have any gray hair until her 90s and even then it was just a little bit on the sides. So far I don’t have any gray.

    From Dad’s side I inherited the small hands and feet. For most of my adult life a size 5 shoe was a bit too big. Now a 5 fits better. I can still wear a child’s size 3, depending on the shoe style. Shoe shopping is not a favorite activity.

    My musical talent, such as it is, probably comes from Mom’s side. One of my aunts and a cousin were good pianists and one cousin is a very good singer.

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  9. My mother grew up on a farm near Worthington, and became a Californian at age 18. She met my Dad, an Oklahoman, in Lon Angeles after the war. Sometimes in my 50s, we were shown a picture from a family reunion my mom attended in Minnesota. My wife looked at it, and at my uncles, and declared me to be able to “fit right on a tractor and look at home.” I guess I favor that side of the family.

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  10. My mother’s family genes somehow seem to win the battle in a high percentage of my relatives. My father’s genes seem to have nothing to do with me: appearance, personality, skills, attitudes, etc. nothing.

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  12. I worked with a guy who had the last name of Krider. He was on the short side with sandy hair. Most of the rest of his family was tall and dark. When he was eighteen, he was called in for a draft physical. Seated next to another eighteen-year-old, they compared notes. This other young man was also named Krider.
    It turned out that not only were they both eighteen, they both had the same birthday. In fact, they were born in the same hospital. This other Krider was tall and dark…

    He decided not to pursue it.

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      1. Maybe. I think he was happy with his family as it was. This was long before even the notion of DNA (at least at the general public level) and even now not everyone wants to know about the maladies they might inherit.

        A DNA test by any of his successors may turn up some interesting results.

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  13. I’ve been told I look like my mom. Someone asked if we were sisters once. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She is 24 years older than me.

    These days I think I look like my dad, which doesn’t fill me with joy. I think it’s because of the weight gain. I inherited his genes in that regard. He wasn’t a healthy person, and he died right after his 60th birthday. He had heart disease and diabetes, and suffered strokes for two years before he died of cerebral hemorrhage.

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  15. I look just like my dad. When I was growing up my grandmother had a wall full of family photos and by luck of the draw a photo taken of me at age 5 was right next to a photo of my dad at his 5th birthday party. We could almost have been identical twins. Both my sisters look like my mom. When I was younger I used to resent this quite a bit but now everyone thinks I’m the youngest of the three of us.

    I got my organizational skill from my mom, although she always says that I took it and ran with it. Not sure if that’s true. Love of reading from both my folks. Love of science from my dad. Social skills from my mom. Not sure where the cooking gene or the musical gene came from…..

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  16. Good Evening,

    I am such a mix of genetic expression. My mother’s parents and extended family was very petite. I towered over both my grandparents on her side. My height came from dad’s side. Dad’s grandfather was quite tall (6’2″ or so). My mother who was very short never forgave me my length as a baby (22 1/2 “). In her long list of complaints about my character, the first two were that I was too long for her to bear in a pregnancy because she was just barely 5’1”. The second was that I was a girl and she wanted a boy. Whadya do about that? I finally told her these things were what she created and not my choice, but she seemed to hold this against me. (I wish I was joking about this, but sadly, no).

    I have always thought that I am really similar to the Quakers in the family tree in attitude and conviction about various issues–they were firm abolitionists over many generations, and I seemed to take up their devotion to social equity. My sister seems to be the pure genetic expression of the Puritans, right down to her “early to bed, early to rise” sleep patterns (she is asleep by 8:30pm and awakens at 5am). My brother looks like our Irish fore-bearers, with red hair, freckles and blue eyes. My very dark Stratton Grandfather looked at him and said, “He does not look like any Stratton I have ever known.” There is a very old picture of my Irish Great-grandfather with his siblings. One of his brothers looks very much like my brother. It is spooky.

    Interesting to me is the circus performer who went by the name Tom Thumb (Charles Stratton, I think) was very short. I knew a relative of his who lived here in Eden Prairie. Her maiden name was Stratton, but from a different family than mine (they settled in Vermont and New Hampshire) while ours were part of the William Penn Quaker settlement. She said all the Stratton men in her dad’s family were extremely short.

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