"Do you want kids?"

-A lot of people, their initial reaction is,

"Oh this is so different, it must be wrong."

-"What if I'm not being the right dad?

"Or not being the right mom?"

Or "What if what I'm doing is really damaging them?"

and some people can get really like, personally offended like, "how dare you do this?".

- I was very excited looking around our tiny apartment like, where are we gonna put a baby?

-Keep trying.

-Baby crepe, un-crepe the baby.

- Whatcha eatin' Grey?

I was so excited to parent, I've wanted to be a parent since I was 16 years old.

It's one of the most challenging and also one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in my life.

What do you think, Kiddo?

There you go.

- gotta get the booty in.

The question of, is this a boy is this a girl, as long as that's still an unknown, people act much more neutrally.

So, if we're raising Grey in a gender neutral slash gender creative way,

Grey can be who they want to be without the strictures that society puts on so many kids so early on.

-See all the birds? Look there's another one!

- From the minute someone finds out a child's sex,

the tone of your voice, the way that you speak,

the way that you handle a child, changes in little ways that most people go,

"oh it's not a big deal",

but it can be because it builds up.

- These unconscious biases that we hold around gender, they absolutely frame the paths that our children think that they can go down.

- The ones that are born with penises get much more rougher handled and peoples voices get lower and,

"oh you're a tough guy, buddy"

and "hi princess", higher voices, softer tone.

We really wanted to minimize that as much as humanly possible,

because without those expectations kids are free to be whoever they want to be.

We really wanted everyone to treat Grey thee way you would any other child, regardless of gender.

I was born and raised in rural Wyoming.

I always knew I was different, I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

I think my mom wanted a very feminine, girly girl daughter.

I wore a lot of pink dresses.

I knew pretty immediately, something about this isn't right, but I just didn't know who was safe, what was safe.

On the inside I felt alone and isolated, and at times afraid,

and when things really became overwhelming and seemingly unapproachable,

I would turn to suicidal thoughts.

But luckily, I had family and friends who were there for me.

I remember eating dinner, I remember looking at them going,

"when am I gonna grow my penis?"

Both my parents were just kind of frozen and then they had to be like, "oh, you don't grow one."

-The amazing Tiffany.

- "How do you know that you're queer?", like everybody questions it.

-All right just talk to me.

-It's so silly, 'cause if you flip it, you're like "how did you know you were straight?",

why would you ever ask that,

it's just like the assumption that you're straight, and so I struggled a lot with that.

I think about all of the people that I know who are trans or non-binary who's experiences growing up were traumatic, and I think knowing that,

I want to be a parent who hopefully is creating space for my child to trust me,

because I'm showing that I trust them.

You ready?

Sorry, excuse us.

-How old is she?

- They are 15 months old.

We actually use they/them pronouns for Grey - Oh!

- until they tell us who they are that's why you were like "who? What?"

- Oh, wow.

All right so...

- They. - They, awesome.

Well enjoy the pride parade.

- Did you say thank you? Thank you!

We are pulling apart this idea of sex, which is related to genitals,

and gender which is related to how you move in the world.

So what you wear,

how you share your identity with other people,

all of those things are related to gender,

whereas sex is really biology, genitals, that's about it.

- I mean we're lucky, we have...

We're in the best, we're probably in one of the best places we could be in, being in Brooklyn,

to find some really good inclusive schools that are gonna respect what we're doin'.

- Like regardless, people are gonna gender our kid.

I know we're gonna have a conversation as they get a little bit older about like, what their genitals are expected to mean at some point and that will be related to why people will gender you in a certain way.

'Cause you don't want them to feel all that stigma and shame that you've...

You're already feeling and filtering for them, but then the hard part is is they're engaging in the world.

- And this could just be me but it feels like a lot of people are quick to, they're like "oh yeah you're gonna mess up your kids",

and it's like, well... - So are you.

- I mean, every parent has learned something from the parents before them.

I mean, when we were kids I don't remember wearing a seatbelt.

Like ever.

- Grey's gonna grow up and probably experience some shame and stigma around the way that we raised them, and that's okay,

and we're gonna have to have conversations about that.

And also talk about why we made the decisions we made.

- Who's the baby?

How old is he?

Or her?

How old are they?

- They're 20 months.

- 20? You have two of them?

- No, so we use the singular they.

Like if we-- you know if you don't know if someone uses he or she, you say they.

- I don't think, I don't think you have to prepare them, I think they already are prepared at birth.

They ju-- this happens naturally.

'Cause I think what you're doing is you're changing the pattern of life.

Where I just allowed the child--

I mean I have so many people, little girls that I thought were so feminine,

but they turned out to be very masculine.

- That's basically what we're doing in a different way - and that's what you're doing you're doing it in a.. - everything is an option and they'll decide - well you're doing it, I didn't do it and let it become.

- [Mother] They talked a more earlier.

- Yeah, I think you're pretty snoozy, kid.

- The cameras.

Hey.

Gender creative parenting is only this like tiny facet of what we're doing as parents.

We're making hundreds of decisions every single day.

- What books do you read your child, or what toys do you let them play with?

or what toys do you let them play with?

Did you do bottles, did you do formula,

did you breastfeed, did you do both,

did you do this, did you do that?

- Grey, come pick.

- [Father] For me the hardest thing

is sometimes other parents

being really critical - What do you wanna wear?

- We're not saying everyone has to do this,

we're not saying that this is for everyone,

but for us, this is one of those things of risk mitigation

is what we're trying to accomplish.

As long as they're happy,

that's really all that matters to us.

- [Woman] Oh look who's up.

- [Mother] You're in your birthday outfit!

- Our families are really supportive

and they try really hard,

and sometimes they make mistakes.

At our daycare, they're trying.

It's in our file that we use they/them pronouns.

- Really the goal here is,

it's not about me trying to force anything on Grey,

it's actually the exact opposite.

And we don't know their gender yet,

and when they tell us, they'll tell us.

And it might change over time and that's okay too.

♪ Happy birthday too you ♪

♪ Happy birthday dear, Gray ♪

♪ Happy birthday too you♪

[group laughing and cheering]

[jazz music]