A couple has spoken out and revealed that they refuse to let anyone know about the sex of their baby in order to stop “unconscious gender bias.
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As Jake England-Johns and Hobbit Humphrey from Bath, UK, explained, their 17-month-old toddler’s sex is unknown even to their closest family members and friends whom they requested to refer to the child as ‘they.’
Furthermore, the couple admitted they dress their child both in girls’ and boys’ clothing to avoid gender bias and raise their child as gender-neutral.
“Gender-neutral refers to us trying to behave neutrally towards the child, rather than trying to make them neutral,” 35-year-old Jake said in an interview with BBC Inside Out.
“We’re not trying to make them be anything. We just want them to be themselves. We are quite good now at holding space for people’s discomfort in us saying, ‘Actually, we don’t tell anyone, we’re not telling anyone for now.’
“We’re just letting Charlie be a baby. Charlie is the most lovely little human. They’re into everything, they’re really active – just a delight.”
As Jake’s partner added, they made the decision to protect their child from biased opinions.
“So much of gender bias is unconscious. When I got pregnant we then were having a discussion about how we were going to mitigate the unconscious bias and we figured that the only way we could do that was just not to tell people,” Hobbit expressed.
“To use the they/them pronoun for as long as we can, and create this little bubble for our baby to be who they are.
“Eventually they will get told by somebody that pink is only for girls and blue is only for boys, and you can’t play with that because you are particular sex. That’s still a thing that happens these days. We’re just trying to protect Charlie from that.
“It has had the effect we wanted, of letting our baby develop its own interests regardless of gender. So, for example, while they love having a doll’s tea party every morning, they also are really fascinated by motorbikes and machinery.
“Eventually once our baby is old enough, they can obviously decide for themselves what gender they want to be, but for now we just want them to be able to grow up in their own little bubble.”
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