AIBU to feel uneasy about male staff in nurseries?

The analogy doesn’t work because there is no correlation between race and sex offences as compared to the very strong correlation between sex and sex offences - 96-98% are committed by men.

No one is saying it’s all men. Nursery workers provide intimate care to non-verbal children and sex offenders seek out roles that will give them opportunities to offend. It is blatantly obvious that sex offenders would seek out these jobs (and have done - as numerous men have been convicted of doing just that). Given the tiny minority of male employees in nurseries, in my view, the risk is both disproportionately high and unnecessary since there are plenty of nurseries without male staff. Your child your choice however.

There's no financial incentive for anyone to choose it as a job. Including women.

They would call the parents to wipe arses.
My daughter is a teacher, she does not handle body fluids.

Adult single-sex dignity and safeguarding of children are totally different things. A common argument from the TRAs insisting that TIM should be freely allowed to use women's toilets is that "We just want to pee" - whereby the majority indeed probably won't be seeking to physically assault or harm the women there in any way, this is completely dismissing the dignity of the women in there who do not want to have to share with adult males.

By contrast, little boys go into the ladies' with their mums all the time, as do little girls into the gents' with their dads, as small children neither know nor care about the concept of dignity.

Incidentally, with the statistics of male nursery workers abusing children, how do you know that there aren't a great many decent men who love kids and would find it really rewarding working with them, but who feel strongly deterred from applying because of the widespread attitude that men who want to do this must have bad intentions? No good man would in his wildest nightmares want to be in a position of being suspected of being a paedophile; whereas the bad men have everything to gain in their determination to get into a job where they can access children to abuse them - so it could well be a vicious circle.

They would call the parents to wipe arses.
My daughter is a teacher, she does not handle body fluids.

Adult single-sex dignity and safeguarding of children are totally different things. A common argument from the TRAs insisting that TIM should be freely allowed to use women's toilets is that "We just want to pee" - whereby the majority indeed probably won't be seeking to physically assault or harm the women there in any way, this is completely dismissing the dignity of the women in there who do not want to have to share with adult males.

By contrast, little boys go into the ladies' with their mums all the time, as do little girls into the gents' with their dads, as small children neither know nor care about the concept of dignity.

Incidentally, with the statistics of male nursery workers abusing children, how do you know that there aren't a great many decent men who love kids and would find it really rewarding working with them, but who feel strongly deterred from applying because of the widespread attitude that men who want to do this must have bad intentions? No good man would in his wildest nightmares want to be in a position of being suspected of being a paedophile; whereas the bad men have everything to gain in their determination to get into a job where they can access children to abuse them - so it could well be a vicious circle.

The biological vested interest that the father has in the child changes the narrative completely
And whilst it’s still not sadly unheard of for the biological father to abuse the child it is relatively rare compared to the stepfather for example who should not be left alone with the kids

No, I haven't. You think it's proportionate to ban all men from mammography work because of women's dignity. You don't think it's proportionate to ban men from being nursery workers because the statistics show that they commit the vast and overwhelming majority of sexual abuse despite being 3% of the workforce.

Although fair enough that you didn't send your child to nursery!

Given the amount of children starting school not toilet trained - they or the teaching assistants do.

Both could be male.

Like I said, happy for you to sacrifice your kids’ safety on the altar of your misplaced beliefs but I wouldn’t risk the safety of mine.

If you believe that safeguarding children is ineffective, despite statutory government guidance with trained senior leaders and staff then you are sacrificing the safety of your children.

If men can commit abuse and not be caught, so can women. System failure regardless of man or woman.

Did you/do you keep your children at home with you?

Thats a strawman argument, primary school teachers do not wipe children’s genitalia

But paedophiles are in a minority - a very very small one. Just because most paedophiles are male still p[represents a very tiny minority of males in general.

We need to keep things in proportion.

Should we say that because a very small minority of say black people commit crimes, then we should be wary of all black people? - that is a horrifying thought that would shock us all. But we are happy to do that to half the population.

The vast majority of men are just fine - they, like us, have their foibles, but they cannot all be tarred with the predatory brush.

Why were you ok for them to be alone with their father? That is a higher risk than them being alone with a nursery worker?

Until we start accepting where most CSA happens it is almost impossible to reduce it.

Male role models in primary both inside and outside of school is plenty early enough. It would be very unusual for a child to have experience zero caregiving from a male until they reached primary school in any event. Most of your post is a massive stretch and a load of non-sequiturs.

Like I said, happy for you to sacrifice your kids’ safety on the altar of your misplaced beliefs but I wouldn’t risk the safety of mine.

Why were you ok for them to be alone with their father? That is a higher risk than them being alone with a nursery worker?

Until we start accepting where most CSA happens it is almost impossible to reduce it.

If you're fine with an unnecessary higher risk of sexual abuse, that's your choice. But it does, quite literally, mean that one is in favour of policies that result in higher levels of sexual abuse of children, as that's the outcome of having male workers in nurseries. It's not my problem if you don't like that.

Personally, I didn't send my children to nursery, they just so happened to have female teachers at school (but were verbal by then anyway), and were never alone with male relatives when small except my husband, their father.

"But it does, quite literally, mean that one is in favour of policies that result in higher levels of sexual abuse of children, as that's the outcome of having male workers in nurseries. It's not my problem if you don't like that"

As previously posted equality legislation In the UK means that you cannot ban men from working in nurseries, whether you like it or not. It's up to nurseries to put appropriate and effective safeguarding measures in place.

(3) show who? In the sad reality where these jobs are very attractive to predators/paedos who want to gain access to kids, I’d rather not use my own precious children as ideological Guinea pigs to prove some point about gender equality.

You're showing the whole of society - including the tiny little kids who are in the nursery. They don't just exist in suspended isolation, as primitive creatures who are fed and have their nappies changed and nothing much else - every second of their lives, they're learning and absorbing so much.

Nobody ever says that there's no point in adults talking to or reading to little ones, on the grounds that they cannot yet talk or read themselves. We could just wait until such time as they can talk and read on their own... and then be surprised that that time never arrives - as nobody has ever modelled or introduced them to it beforehand in those crucial first years.

We start off with tiny children who only know women as carers - especially those from households where no adult male lives. This cements it even in their young minds that men have no meaningful role in caring for children. Some of them probably find it a shock if they get to primary school and find that there are actually men there in loco parentis.

I wonder if this is a contributory factor in many of the useless men who've always assumed that men are free agents whilst women and children come as one combined package. Women are great for sex, but if the worst comes to the worst and they have babies that you can't be bothered with at any time, you can just leave that mother/child combo and move on to another woman with your time, money and efforts.

Meanwhile, those girls who have also grown up with exclusively (or near enough) females looking after them end up as women who may express horror at the very idea that men could want to work with children and be declaring that there must be something inherently wrong and untrustworthy with all of these men.

Remember: there was a time when nobody - of either sex - could possibly understand why a woman would want to drive, work outside of the home, bother her head with adult financial responsibility, vote etc. Where did they get these preconceptions from, if not from having grown up in a society that instinctively taught them this from a very young age?

You've put words into my mouth there. Like all parents, it's entirely up to you what choices and priorities you make for your own child.

Personally-speaking, we didn't use nurseries or childminders at all for our child; we both went part-time so that we could be with him and care for him ourselves. Naturally, that meant that he was in no danger of any kind of abuse at a nursery; but it also meant that we could direct his learning and experiences ourselves.

A PP said that she would be happy for a bored teenage girl to look after her child - that's fine if it works for her, but this would not have been acceptable for us in preference to an enthusiastic parent being with him all the time in his formative years. That worked great for us; as other parents' choices work great for them.

Yanbu.
Thankfully this was never an issue for me.
It is in my opinion just strange for men to do this for a living.
And no it's not comparable to a man looking after his own child as it has to be done as part and parcel of being a parent but to choose it as a living?
It's poorly paid. I mean I can imagine that there's no financial incentive there.
If for some reason they raised the salary to 6 figures tomorrow I'd understand it.

I don't give a fig if this sends sort of wrong message about putting back women and feminism.
I'd rather a tiny baby be looked after by a bored teenage girl than a man who appears enthusiastic about it.
A baby has no voice. The vast, vast majority of abusers are men.

It just makes sense to ban them.
Yes there will be some male nursery workers who are decent and that's a shame but it's no brainer for me.
The only people who should be allowed to work in nurseries are female.

We don’t do good men any favours by pretending that women and men sexually abuse children in equal numbers. They don’t. And, frankly, men need to be doing something about it. And women saying “Oh, men are wonderful!!” Isn’t helping!

So 97% of nursery workers are female and there was one case of a woman committing sexual abuse two decades ago...
3% of nursery workers are male and there have been 4 or 5 convicted in the last couple of years.