Mom Laughs Off TikTok Trolls After Baby Son Appears Different Race

When new mom *Hannah posted a jokey video showing that her biracial baby son looked identical to her white husband, she never expected to be accused of racism.

The 28-year-old gave birth last September and was surprised to find her baby, Charlie, was the double of her husband, Jack. The couple were told his fair complexion was likely caused by jaundice—a common condition that is usually harmless in newborns and tends to disappear within weeks.

As Charlie reached 1 month, his parents saw that he still resembled Jack, 27, in "every single aspect." The baby is now 9 months old and, earlier this week, Hannah posted a video on TikTok poking fun at how little he looks like his mom.

While the reaction was mainly positive, the couple were hit with accusations of racism, trolls asking if the baby definitely belonged to Hannah and comments suggesting her baby had been "switched at birth."

Hannah and her family are laughing off the comments, however. "Any time you have a viral video I think it's so easy to let the comments and people's opinions affect you in a negative way," she told Newsweek.

"People can try and make you see things in a more negative or controversial way and I refuse to let that happen. I won't let other people flip a narrative I created about my own life and family, that won't happen."

Hannah was a 24-year-old college student when she met Jack, who was completing a summer internship in her local area. The pair hit it off instantly and, when she graduated, Hannah relocated to Jack's hometown, where he was completing his master's degree.

"We decided we were ready to get married," she said. "The long distance just wasn't really working with us, so I'd decided to relocate to continue our relationship."

After a surprise proposal, the couple married in 2019 and Hannah fell pregnant in December 2020.

"We were both super-ecstatic," said Hannah. "I was really excited because we had just started trying. There's a lot of unknowns regarding pregnancy. Everyone hopes they can get pregnant quickly but, in reality, you never know how long it's going to take you.

"I'm adopted so I don't really know a lot of my maternal, birth mother's family history of miscarriages or infertility, so I thought, let's start trying now and hopefully within the next six months we get pregnant."

After their initial delight at the pregnancy, the couple decided they would keep the gender of their baby a secret until birth.

During a scan, however, Hannah saw her sonographer type "XX" into her notes and thought this must be a reference to the baby's chromosomes. She became convinced she was having a girl and started to imagine a daughter with "curly hair and brown eyes."

"Complexion wise, I thought she would be in the middle of both of us and so I had all of these expectations," Hannah said.

"In the delivery room, as soon as I gave birth, Jack kind of announced that it was a boy and I was in complete disbelief. Then, of course, they handed me the baby and I was like, 'Wow, he's so fair. What a beautiful baby but he's so fair.'

"I heard from countless people—from my friends, parents, sisters, everybody—that all babies are born with very fair complexions and over time their complexions change depending on genetics, the parents and so on."

As the weeks passed and Charlie's jaundice disappeared, his light complexion remained. Hannah said his skin was even fairer than his father's.

"I had this baby who at 1 month old resembled my husband in every single aspect. He has dark blue eyes, he has light brown hair that was very straight, so in my mind I thought, 'This baby looks nothing like me.'

"We all know genetics is a complete lottery, I don't think that you can really comprehend it until it's your own child. You know anything can happen, you just never know.

"When I was comparing our features, I didn't see myself in him at all. Of course, I thought, 'This is the most perfect baby,' but could not get past the overwhelming fact that, in my mind, he did not have a single feature relating to my ethnic background."

Hannah said passers-by often stare when she's out alone with Charlie. If they're out with Jack, people assume she isn't the baby's mother.

"Whenever I would carry him around, people would stare. People wouldn't say anything, but people were staring," she said. "That's what gave me an uneasy feeling.

"They would stare in a way you could tell they were trying to figure out what the relationship was. When my husband was with us, people were like, 'Oh that's very clearly his son, but why would he be with another woman that close to a baby being born.'

"Everyone just looked at us like they were very confused about whose baby it was. We are very obviously a couple, but have a very white-looking child."

Earlier this week, Hannah posted her jokey clip on TikTok, where it quickly racked up more than 14 million views.

Most commenters were surprised at Charlie's fair skin, but found Hannah's video amusing and offered their congratulations to the parents. A few were critical, though, calling the video racist or suggesting that Hannah is "ashamed" of her child.

"There were a lot of people who took the opportunity to express that they thought I was ashamed of my son for not being Black enough," she said.

"That couldn't be further from the truth. I think he is the most perfect baby, it's just not often you see our situation unfold, that's why I think this is funny. I think a lot of people would want to share this.

"There were some people who said 'This is very racist, imagine if it was flipped the other way'. Of course you have people who will spin it and make it something it's not, our intent was that it was funny and we loved the reaction."

Hannah is taking the negative comments in her stride, even the "crazy" theory that Charlie was switched at birth.

She said: "To me, it's a funny video. I think, regardless of what people say, I know the intent of the video. There were several comments from people saying, 'Are you sure this is your baby?'

"Obviously people interpret jokes differently, but it's crazy to me that real people would think that I would take the time to take a video of a child that I didn't think was mine and post it online and act as if that was my child. That is not real, that doesn't happen.

"If I truly thought my child was switched at birth, I wouldn't have waited until 9 months to try and determine if he really was my child or not! There's no doubt he's our son, so I just laughed off all the comments."

Update 3/7/23: *Names have been changed in this article. This article was updated to anonymise the contributors identity.