A mixed-race couple have nicknamed their offspring the 'rainbow children' - because one is white, one is brown and the other is black.

White mum Carla Nurse, 27, and her black husband Cornel, 31, were unsurprised when their first child Jermaine was born with a mixed-race complexion.

But they were stunned when daughter Tanisha arrived with an Afro-Caribbean appearance - and their second son Jayden was born with white skin and blond hair.


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Carla says friends have dubbed their family the 'United Nations' because of their remarkable spectrum of skin colours.

She said: 'Where I live, it is a predominantly white town and I admit it looks pretty strange when I walk around with my brood of rainbow children.

'I am at a complete loss to explain why they are all different colours - I can only think that it is some type of freaky genetic thing.

'After Jayden was born and he looked Aryan, my friends nicknamed us the United Nations.'

Carla, a part-time model from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, said her only concern is that many people assume the children have different fathers.

She said: 'I remember giving birth to each one of them at the hospital and all the doctors were looking at me thinking I had all these children to different men.

'When people think I've cheated, it makes me so angry.

'I would never stray from Cornel and never have - I'm totally devoted to him and always will be.'


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Cornel - whose Afro-Caribbean father came from Barbados and white mother came from London - was born in England and grew up in the Suffolk village of Halesworth.

They met 12 years ago at a nightclub in Oulton Broad, Suffolk, and married in 2001.

Their eldest son Jermaine, now six, has brown eyes with golden brown skin - and is a dead ringer for the world's most expensive footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.

Daughter Tanisha, four, takes after her father with Afro-Caribbean skin, dark eyes and tight black curls.

Youngest son Jayden, now two, has white skin, blond hair and blue eyes.

All three siblings have their mum's nose and big eyes - while Tanisha has full lips similar to Cornel.

London-born Carla, who is a natural blonde with blue eyes, admits she is concerned about racial stereotyping and possible teasing that the kids will endure in school.

She said: 'I often worry if racial stereotypes will shine through and maybe my kids who are black may be hindered in life and on the job hunt because of racism.

'I think statistics show that black kids often find it much harder to achieve. I really hope that isn't the case and they all do really well.

'But its funny the way their dad tries to make them all listen to black music like hip hop and R'n'B.

'My white son might turn out to be the next Eminem - some kind of white rap artist.'

Cornel, a poultry factory supervisor, said he had never doubted the children were his and all the pregnancies were planned.

He said: 'They are definitely all mine and the whole thing is just a freak of nature.

'Tanisha was dark from the start but as the boys got older one has gone darker and one has got whiter.

'All of the kids were planned - Jermaine was conceived on holiday in Florida and Tanisha and Jayden were conceived at home.

'They all have our facial features; it's just the colour of their skin which is different - it's hard to believe.'

Carla said her three kids had personalities just as distinctive as their skin tone.

She described Jermaine as confident, Tanisha as shy and Jayden as mischievous.

She said: 'Jermaine is like me - very happy-go-lucky and enthusiastic. He's very intelligent and does well in school.

'Tanisha is like a mini version of Cornel. She is quite reserved and holds back a bit more but is a real girly girl and loves pretty things.

'Jayden is absolutely full of mischief - cheeky and inquisitive and always getting into scrapes.'

Carla said she was sometimes compared to the multi-racial families of celebrities like Madonna and had been asked in the past if any of her children were adopted.

But she said: 'I am so lucky, I wouldn't change any of them for the world.

'Celebrities go through so much to adopt a rainbow family but mine just arrived. It must have cost Madonna a fortune to adopt her kids.

'Everyone calls us the United Nations of families and now I know how Angelina Jolie feels.'

How genes affect skin colour

Dr Jess Buxton, of the British Society for Human Genetics, said it was rare for three children with totally different skin colour to be born to the same parents.

She said: 'I have never heard of this before and I'm sure it can't happen often.

'But several different genes control skin colour in a similar way to eye and hair colour.

'Children from the same parents only share about 50 per cent of their genes.

'If one parent has several "light skin" gene variants and the other has several "dark skin" variants, then their children can have a skin colour anywhere in between, depending on which combination of variants they receive.

'This is a random process, so it is certainly possible for the same parents to have children with different skin colours, although because we don't know all of the genes involved it isn't possible to predict when this will happen.

'There is still a lot we don't know about individual genes and how they govern characteristics.'