Meet family where mum is daddy, dad is mummy and son, 4, is being raised as gender neutral

Louise and Nikki Draven are a queer couple who are being referred to as Britain’s first gender-fluid family and they are raising their 4-year-old son, Star Cloud, as gender neutral.

The mum of the family was born a man but is having hormone treatment to fully transition to a woman, while the dad of the family, Nikki, is a pansexual who was born female but sometimes dresses as male and sometimes as female. The couple is bringing up their son to "not be hung up" on being a boy.





Star Cloud has been told by his parents that he is "a person" rather than "a boy". He is free to wear make-up, paint his nails, pick out boys’ or girls’ clothes and play with dolls. He will go to school for the first time in September wearing a boy’s uniform, but with pink vest and socks that he has chosen for the occasion. The young boy has said he might grow up to be a man or a woman.

Former pub bouncer, Nikki, 30, says: "Neither of us gets hung up on the gender we were born as. We don’t want our child constrained by that either. We’re just an ordinary family being who we want to be.

"We want to give him the confidence to be who he wants – growing up, we didn’t have that. We never tell Star he’s a boy, we tell him he can be whatever he wants. We don’t buy gender specific toys or clothes and we let him choose what he wears. Pink is one of his favourite colours.

"He loves wearing leggings and, because of his name, he loves clothes with star patterns on. He loves Barbie dolls, dressing up and fairies – but he also likes toys considered as boys’, such as cars.

"We use the words 'he' and 'him' but don’t make any kind of big deal out of him being one sex or the other."




The mum of the family, Louise, is Star’s biological father, while Nikki, who Star calls Daddy, is actually his birth mother. Nikki says Star chose which of his parents would be which by saying his first word, "Da-da", and allowing her to lift him out of his cot rather than Louise.

Asked by a Mirror reporter if he is a boy or a girl, Star says he is a boy. But he changes his answer when Nikki interjects with: "Or are you just a person?"

A year after Star was born, Nikki and Louise has a second son, but he died of a kidney problem at 21 weeks. They have since had a doll created from a picture of him, which Star often plays with.



Louise, 31, has lived as female since a year before Star was born, having felt she was a girl from the age of eight. Nikki identified as lesbian when she first met Louise, who was then male, at an LGBT meeting in 2011. They wed in a Pagan ceremony in January 2012.

Nikki says: "I don’t fall in love with someone because they’re male or female. It doesn’t matter to me what they’ve got between their legs. It’s the mind, personality and soul I fall in love with, not the body."

Nikki and Louise’s approach is likely to spark a national debate on whether the urge not to force his birth gender on Star is projecting their own issues, denying him his true identity.

More photos below.