Like many mothers when Sophia Blake gave birth to her daughter Tiara she expected she would bear more than a passing resemblance to her.
Tiara’s father, Christopher, Perkins, 60, a retired sales manager, is white but at the very least they thought their baby girl would be a mixture of both of them.
So they were shocked when Tiara was born white and blue-eyed.
They thought Tiara’s hair and skin would darken as she grew older. Instead it has remained the same and their daughter has grown into a beautiful – albeit white, blue-eyed – little girl.
Doctors say the chances of Tiara, four, being as white as her father are an incredible million to one.
But the fact that mother and daughter don’t look anything alike is causing difficulties – because people do not believe they are even related.
To make matters worse, Miss Blake, 45, has a daughter Donchae, 17, from a previous relationship with a black man and she is black like her mother.
‘I can’t walk down the road with Tiara without someone making a comment,’ says Miss Blake, a marketing executive from Selly Oak, Birmingham. ‘People simply don’t believe Tiara is my little girl because she looks so completely different.
‘When she was very tiny I didn’t mind so much. But as Tiara has grown older it has become more of a problem.
‘Until I had Tiara I didn’t appreciate how much we all identify ourselves with being white or black – and the issue now is Tiara has a black family but looks white. Sometimes she says, ‘why don’t we look alike mummy?’ I explain she is mixed race but it is very confusing for her.’
Miss Blake, who is estranged from her daughter’s father, believed she would give birth to a baby with dark skin and afro hair.
Read more: Daily Mail UK