What is a Cleft Chin?
A cleft chin is also called a dimple in the chin, a chin cleft or even less elegantly termed a butt chin. It is a small to large indentation in the chin that is actually genetically determined and is caused by failure of the lower jawbone to completely fuse together at the center point. This doesn’t cause problems for most people with a cleft chin; it merely causes variance in appearance. You’ll often see that parents with cleft chins tend to produce children with the same marking. Cleft-chinned parents may or may not pass along the trait to their children, and some children will be born with cleft chins to parents without the trait.
A cleft chin is also called a dimple in the chin, a chin cleft or even less elegantly termed a butt chin. It is a small to large indentation in the chin that is actually genetically determined and is caused by failure of the lower jawbone to completely fuse together at the center point. This doesn’t cause problems for most people with a cleft chin; it merely causes variance in appearance. You’ll often see that parents with cleft chins tend to produce children with the same marking. Cleft-chinned parents may or may not pass along the trait to their children, and some children will be born with cleft chins to parents without the trait. The cleft chin is an interesting study and example of how genetics can work, and how inherited genes sometimes fail in expression. Theoretically, parents who both have cleft chins would immediately pass this on to children, since it is a dominant trait. There are two reasons why this might not occur, because genes dictating the cleft can be affected by var
