To ask about your experience with male nursery staff

Sexual abuse isn't the only form of abuse. Where was the man to blame when the female nursery worker wrapped a child up and left her struggling face down in a bouncer until she suffocated to death after days of verbally abusing her and mistreating her whilst other female staff simply watched it go on?

If you think men who work in nurseries are oddballs then that's what you will see. The one at my DC's nursery who is also now our babysitter is just a normal guy.

Not amazing, really.

They must know that many parents view them negatively, even with suspicion. To continue to follow the career path they have chosen in spite of that tells me that it’s something that they really want to do. People who enjoy their work are obviously going to be effective.

Frankly, over the decades with children and now grandchild, we’ve encountered several less than enthusiastic young, female nursery workers who were unsuited to the job and clearly would rather have been elsewhere.

The best head of a primary school and the best year 4 teacher we encountered were also men. The kids adored them both (girls and boys).

Our son graduated from university last year and got in touch with that year 4 teacher to let him know and to thank him for his part in getting him there.

My twins have a male keyworker at their nursery school (they're almost 4) and they adore him. He seems to be a firm fave with all of the kids

Amazing how often the male workers are “the best we ever had”!

My daughter had a male key worker at nursery. Best nursery staff member that ever worked with my girls. My 18 year old still remembers him for being fun and supportive.

I was less happy about the nursery managers husband constantly being at my 3rd daughter's nursery. But he wasn't actually working as a nursery worker though he was dbs checked.

No I believe and have seen from all those news stories how women can do it but often they are encouraged by male peadophile rings. Im just stating what I have seen with my own eyes even in the social care/ residential home system the men tend to be oddballs. My child’s last nursery had a male worker but he was the chef it didn’t bother me. Intimate care whether I had a boy or girl would be a concern for me by a male member of staff

Do you think all females who do it, do it out of the goodness of their hearts? Some girls are pushed to do it so end up there because they can't think of anything else they might want to do and it's a popular suggestion because female = caring work.

It only appears to be strange because we live in a sexist society which believes that childcare is woman's work.

There's a really good point in there about being passionate about early years and I think moving away from seeing childcare as something 'women do' and promoting it more as a profession would help. There are a lot more male carers in social care now - while it's still heavily dominated by women, the fact it's moving away from being seen as some extension of a woman's nature and more of a regulated and formal role helps. Maybe they could start increasingly the pay in line with that though!

And you wonder why more men don't get into caring roles.

And why teenage boys turn to toxic people like Andrew Tate for role models. When they are being told by mothers that all men are predators.

It's the people - usually women - that are cautious who are responsible for the implementation of safeguarding in the first place. The shamers might want to remember that 🙃

I don't know what's supposed to be funny about that. The OP is asking for opinions because almost all nursery workers are female. There's absolutely no call for dickhead responses.

My daughter is 4 and has had the same male key worker at nursery since she was 2.5, along with another male working in her room. She was out of nappies by this point so I can’t comment on that but they often helped her go to the toilet/wipe/change clothes if she had an accident.

I find both the men to be absolutely lovely, caring and really passionate about early years and working with children. I think it’s important for any staff member to get to know the children and their families. We were giving profiles of all staff which included their names, qualifications, experience and just some fun facts about themselves like what they do at the weekend or any pets etc which I found helped us know them on a bit more of a personal level. This definitely helped my partner feel more comfortable as a whole (I was already absolutely fine with it as I work in EY too)

A thing to remember is, male staff members go through the exact same safer recruitment checks as any female staff.

Some of the best staff i’ve worked with have been men. They are entering a female dominated sector knowing they are likely to face discrimination for their gender but still (usually) go above and beyond.

Please talk through your worries with the staff (in a respectful way) and i’m sure they’ll be so happy to put your mind at ease and answer any questions you may have!

Why is it strange? If women can get fulfilment from nurturing and developing children, why is it strange that a man might also?

Personally I think it’s really strange, normally it’s the ones that aren’t straight who choose this profession as male. If not does he have children of his old? He is happy to not do as much ‘free’ childcare for his own but will be paid for it. They have always in my experience seemed like oddballs. I even went to college doing childcare with some who did it just ‘because it looks good on their cv’ while they also had part time jobs at Tesco.

Yes but also even when female doctors do procedures there also has to be a chaperone whether they're performing the procedure in a man or women. The same for male doctors when doing procedures on men or women. It's to keep everyone safe, so yes your right men commit more abuse in general but again for both female and male staff in a nursery, they have procedures e.g doors being open to make sure everybody can see what people are doing. All nursery staff are DBS checked and have safeguarding trainings. You can't stop everyone but it's also important to get men into early years and primary to act as positive role models for both girls and especially boys with rise of misogyny in young men.

We had one. He was great, really switched on. He did do nappy changes but the changing room was quite open.

It is not unreasonable or a bias to be nervous about men caring for pre-verbal or very young children. Mem commit the vast majority (like over 90%) of sexual crimes. The only reason we don't hear much about men abusing children in nurseries is because not many many work in nurseries as it isn't socially acceptable due to gender roles. If it was a 50-50 split between men and women, I guarantee the rates of abuse would increase significantly.

In the same vein, that's why single women need to be very careful about the strange men they move into their house. It's not bigoted. Just statistics.

I agree that changes need to be made and soon. Little wonder that the newscaster was so upset. It’s terrible enough to read about let alone to have to report it to the nation. I cannot begin to imagine what those poor parents are enduring. I hope that they’ll receive as much support as possible.

I’m so sorry for you and your child

My 16 year old boy is thinking about paediatric nurse, primary school teacher or was thinking about doing childcare course. He is part of youth organisation and also coaches younger kids in his sport.
Another mum raised with me she didn't think he should do childcare course as you know he's a bloke - to quote her. Im sad myself and dc had talks about employability, people's prejudices etc.

I did a degree in Early Years Education. There were 59 girls on the course and 1 guy. He was an absolutely lovely guy, clearly loved working with 0-5s just as all the other 59 people on the course did.

However when it came to placements, every nursery he did work experience at, there was absolute uproar from the parents. One year the parents all pulled their kids out of the nursery on his 2nd day, threatened to all give notice to the nursery if he wasn’t removed from his placement. Purely because he was male, no other reason.

I felt so sad for him, that he would struggle to ever get a job in his chosen profession, purely because he was a man.

The vast majority of nursery workers are female, so you'd need to look at the proportion of each sex that are abusive, not the total number of each.

Why is it so shocking? I said that ‘I know I shouldn’t feel this way’ but it can just be a natural instinct to feel uncomfortable with a man you don’t know particularly well changing your DDs nappies or helping them in the toilet 🤷‍♀️

I think there’s also the angle that a lot of us as women have had numerous bad experiences of men and it’s sometimes an instinct we can’t help. It’s like if you’re walking home at night and somebody is walking behind you. If you turn and see another woman you feel completely different than if you turn and see a male. If somebody says ‘I feel uncomfortable if I’m walking home alone at night and there is a man walking behind me’ that doesn’t mean they think all men are evil and dangerous predators does it?

Except that women are less likely to commit all crimes than men.

Agreed. I think that under no circumstances should a male worker being doing nappy changes. I believe that it presents too high a risk statistically.

Apparently there are 368,000 nursery workers in the UK. A quick search has brought up 4 cases of child sex abuse by nursery workers. (I’m sure there are more).

Two of those convicted are reported female (although sometimes male sex offenders are reported as female if they choose) - we know that Vanessa George is female and for this purpose I will assume Sophie Elms is too. They were both working at the instigation of a man - no excuse I know.

There are two male sex offenders reported. I couldn’t find a name for one in Bristol but the other was teenage male Jayden McCarthy who abused 9 altogether- raping two.

Obviously this is not fully researched but it won’t be far out. It shows there are roughly 2 female sex abusers out of 360,640 and 2 male abusers out of 7,360.

That is a big worry and posters on here enthusiastically shaming others who demonstrate a little caution when advocating for male nursery staff should reflect.