To think male nursery workers should be banned for safety reasons?

It's just common sense and a need to protect your kid against the very real possibility that it could happen.

It's just common sense and a need to protect your kid against the very real possibility that it could happen.

My son's dad agrees (a man, obviously). Too many reports coming out recently of male workers abusing kids.

I think you’d open the floodgates re men working with children. What if you get a couple of high profile cases about sexual abuse by teachers or sports coaches? And the data shows that there’s just as much sexual abuse in schools/ clubs / care homes / hospitals as there ever was in nurseries (which is likely already true).

I think the issue with this debate is that people have a visceral reaction to CSA (understandably). People worry about it more than about neglect or emotional or physical abuse or preventable accident even though these are likely far more prevalent and can be just as damaging. The media report on CSA more because it grabs attention and then you read about a few cases and see a pattern and perceive a high level of risk. But really if you want to improve children’s safety in nurseries there are probably a thousand better ways to do it. And most will be pretty boring like improving first aid training etc.

And I don’t think it’s about protecting men’s “feelings”. It’s that if you feed boys such as negative view of themselves - and it really is the most negative view possible that they can’t be trusted not to abuse young children even if there is nothing in their conduct to suggest that they would- what do you expect those boys to turn into as adults? And if boys grow up with only female influence or contact with unrelated males only with a female chaperone and where the man is held in some suspicion what are they going to think about men? I think these are already issues.

There is some tension between safeguarding and children having exposure to a wide range of people and situations. And if we’re at the point of safeguarding children from half the population I personally think we’d have got the balance wrong and there must be a better way.

Father...?

I think you’d open the floodgates re men working with children. What if you get a couple of high profile cases about sexual abuse by teachers or sports coaches? And the data shows that there’s just as much sexual abuse in schools/ clubs / care homes / hospitals as there ever was in nurseries (which is likely already true).

I think the issue with this debate is that people have a visceral reaction to CSA (understandably). People worry about it more than about neglect or emotional or physical abuse or preventable accident even though these are likely far more prevalent and can be just as damaging. The media report on CSA more because it grabs attention and then you read about a few cases and see a pattern and perceive a high level of risk. But really if you want to improve children’s safety in nurseries there are probably a thousand better ways to do it. And most will be pretty boring like improving first aid training etc.

And I don’t think it’s about protecting men’s “feelings”. It’s that if you feed boys such as negative view of themselves - and it really is the most negative view possible that they can’t be trusted not to abuse young children even if there is nothing in their conduct to suggest that they would- what do you expect those boys to turn into as adults? And if boys grow up with only female influence or contact with unrelated males only with a female chaperone and where the man is held in some suspicion what are they going to think about men? I think these are already issues.

There is some tension between safeguarding and children having exposure to a wide range of people and situations. And if we’re at the point of safeguarding children from half the population I personally think we’d have got the balance wrong and there must be a better way.

I can’t find stats covering all forms of abuse broken down by sex.
The only abuse where it is broken down is CSA. Which is only 8% of all child abuse.

It doesn’t necessarily follow that the other 92% of child abuse, and all disabled and elder abuse would show the exact same pattern of offending as CSA.

I have a son and I completely agree with the OP.

I would never, ever leave my children with a man I don't know. Men are statistically proven to be more of a danger to both women and children than women are.
It's so idealistic and frankly disgusting that many on this thread would rather have a "male role model" in the nursery (when it's factual that many pedophiles seek out these settings to offend, so how can you be sure you're looking at a good 'male role model') than want to protect their baby/toddler against the risks.

Childcare jobs, and club leaders, sports coaches, churches etc etc. Anywhere there is access to children. Do you propose we ban men from ever having any position where they can be around children. The “studies” are bullshit and to suggest paedophiles don’t target women so they can have access to children in a family is laughable. Familial abuse isn’t about opportunism, but even if it were, it accounts for over 90% of abuse so if you want to protect children, we should be banning men from homes, because that would be far more effective.

You keep talking about risk, but let’s put that into perspective. There are approximately 2.5 million children currently in nurseries. The number of male nursery workers is about 11,000. If they were so big a risk that they should be banned from taking the job, there would be stories like this happening every single day. It would be an epidemic. 60% of all abuse of children in nurseries is carried out by men. That leaves 40% that isn’t. What is the solution when women do it? And what is the actual number of children who are abused in nurseries? Bizarrely these figures aren’t collected, but it is fair to say the risk of it happening is very low generally.

We need to improve safeguarding for all children in all settings being looked after by everyone. No person should ever be with a child alone, there is absolutely no need for that. We need to improve the vetting system because frankly the disclosure process is laughable.

I feel really sorry for any guy working in nurseries at the moment. Every one of them will be being looked at as if they are paedophiles.

Some people are not suited to look after children. We should focus on individuals rather than deciding that one aspect of a person precludes them from the job.

Agree. It’s odd how the focus is only on CSA. There are many other forms of child abuse including neglect. We can’t really say it’s overwhelmingly men when we are only looking at 8% of all child abuse.

And how many exactly primary age kids do speak up when they are able to? You have missed the point totally with this. Just because they can physically talk doesn’t mean they will, or feel they can. SA is so much more than kids being able to “tell”.