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A Bath couple have vowed to bring up their child gender-neutral, keeping its sex a secret even from close family.

Mother Hobbit Humphrey, 38, and father Jake England-Johns, 35, are dressing their 17-month-old in both boys’ and girls’ clothes and using the pronoun “they” to address them.

The married couple, who live on a houseboat near Bath, say they just want their child to “be themselves,” free from “the gender bias that society places on children”.

The child’s grandmother only discovered their sex after 11 months when she changed a nappy.

“Gender neutral refers to us trying to behave neutrally towards the child, rather than trying to make them neutral,” Mr England-Johns explained in an interview with the BBC.

“We're not trying to make them be anything. We just want them to be themselves.”

The pair, both members of the Extinction Rebellion climate action group, appeared on BBC One's Inside Out last night to explain their controversial decision.

They said the baby, whose name was changed to Charlie in the programme, would be allowed make a decision on gender and preferred pronoun when old enough.

They added that they hoped to use the they/them pronoun “for as long as we can”, saying they aimed to “create this little bubble for our baby to be who they are”.

Ms Humphrey said: “When I found out I was pregnant we spent those nine months discussing ways by which we could try and mitigate the gender bias that society places on children.

“Eventually, we decided that we wouldn’t tell people whether they were boy or girl.”

The couple, who are both circus performers, said their decision to dress the child in boys' and girls' clothes has led to “some pretty confused looks from old ladies in the park”.

Ms Humphrey's mother Camille, 64, admitted she struggled with their decision at first, but added: “As with any learning over time it became embedded and they became 'they'.”

She explained it was only when she was assigned the role of nappy-changer after 11 months that she learnt her grandchild's biological sex.

Ms Humphrey and Mr England-Johns said that despite the challenges, they stand by their original decision.

“It was tricky at first when not only were we new parents but also new parents who had the problem of people getting upset about our baby being gender neutral,” Ms Humphrey said.

“But in the end it has proven to be a really beautiful thing and we’ve had a lot of important conversations from it."