It seems empirically, when I look at my family and those of close friends, behavioural traits and attributes frequently seem to skip a generation. Easiest example: my grandfather was very musical, my father not at all, and I am. Is this an established and understood phenomenon, or is it more to do with observers seeing what they want too see?
If a gene is recessive, then the traits associated with that gene can skip generations if the chromosomes match up right. So if your grandfather was gg, your father and mother both not GG, and you’re also gg, you can see the pattern you’re talking about.
Whether there are genes associated with being musical is not something I can comment on.
Was your mother musical?
Not even slightly. She had no inclination in that direction, and was bemusedly tolerant of demonstrations of my early inclinations! Lovely lady and a good mother but I wonder if the behavioural traits thing goes along the lines of: parents do A, so child does B (to be different), Child’s children aware that their parents do B, so choose to do A, and so the cycle repeats.
Seems to be there with other attributes too, extrovertism and intorvertism being one that comes to mind in a few cases I can think of. Although having said that, it’s unusual I guess for an individual to be across too many family histories in sufficient depth to be able to generalise.
Be careful. The genetics of behavioral proclivities is not well understood. And often there are environmental/cultural factors at play. Not to mention that it’s a gross oversimplification to think that there is a one-to-one correspondence between a given gene and a given trait. Most traits are controlled by multiple genes and many genes can contribute to more than one trait.
But, yes, for those traits caused by single, recessive genes, they can easily “skip a generation”. Still, they won’t necessarily reappear in every other generation, skipping the ones in between. Recessive genes can lie “dormant” for many generations, or reappear in the very next generation, depending on the genetics of the parents.
I’ve always felt that dog ownership skips generations. Me and my brothers had a dog when we were kids. Loved him, really. But we got it out of our system, and are all too familiar with how much work is involved, and none of us got a pet as grownups.
But it was one of the first things my son and his wife got.
I’ve been leary of the old line “baldness skips a generation”.
Both my grandparents were bald by about 40, my dad has a full head of silvery hair at 58. I’ve made it to 27 without any receding hairlines, but I know that little gene’s lurking in me somewhere, just waiting to sneak up on me and take away my hair. 
I think it’s more likely environment than genetics.
I have friends who were radical hippie types, opposing the (Vietnam) war and, if into politics, supporting Gene McCarthy. Then they were shocked when their children, in teenage rebellion, became conservative Republicans. Now the grandchildren are rebelling against their parents, and worked hard to elect Obama – putting their parents into total shock and dismay. While the grandparents are chuckling and telling the grandkids war stories of their days fighting ‘the establishment’.
You could see that as political liberal tendencies skipping a generation. But I think it has more to do with their environment, and children wanting to be different from their parents.
The baldness thing is an old wive’s tale. The genetics of male-pattern baldness are fairly well understood. It’s simply that the baldness allele is dominant in males, but recessive and less penetrant in females.
So do? Some really do not.
I am watching my son and grandson. I remember being there with my son. And they are both like their grandfathers. How ever I and my wife have different temperments.
Yeah, ditto. I’m at 29, just waiting for the sneeky baldness gene to strike.
If both of your parents have the same recessive gene masked by a dominant one, then there’s a 1 in 4 chance that you’ll express that gene, and thus show a trait that neither of your parents had. But if you have an extended family, it’s likely that some other family members show that trait, too, so you might end up with Grandpa’s eyes, or Aunt Mildred’s nose. And there are enough visible traits in a human that even at 1 in 4 odds for each, you’re probably going to get quite an assortment of traits that don’t show up in your parents but do show up in other relatives.