AIBU to feel uneasy about male staff in nurseries?

I take exception to these poor analogies. Black police officers are not statistically more likely to.assault women..
Female pilots are not more likely to crash planes.
Female mechanics are not more likely to wreck cars.
But by every statistical measure, men of all races are more likely to commit sexual crimes. 98% of them are commited by men.

I've worked in nurseries for 30 years. Are male workers better than female ones? In some ways, yes.

So the handful of men you've worked with are all better than the dozens of women you've worked with? I doubt it!

Which one. Noah or Genevieve?

@Mysterian you’re not wrong. I’ve come across staff in the toddler room where the toddlers had the higher IQ.
However, that does not circumvent the risk being discussed.

"All this 'he was far better than the female nursery workers!' schtick gets on my nerves."

I've worked in nurseries for 30 years. Are male workers better than female ones? In some ways, yes. All the men I've worked with all had one thing in common. They all wanted to work with children.
But everybody in childcare want to work with children don't they?
You'd hope that was true, but it's really not. If you've ever worked in childcare you would have met more than a few staff who have just fallen into it. Unmotivated lumps who their careers advisors told to go into "hair or care". If you were to ask them "why childcare?" they'd probably say something like "I dunno really. Sumthink to do innit".
It is harder for men to get a job in childcare. You only have to read Mumsnet. A while ago there were 2 threads running. One basically said that 'all men in childcare are paedophiles' and the other said that 'all paedophiles should be killed.' If you still want to do a job when there is a risk from people who don't think you should be doing it you must be pretty enthusiastic and dedicated to it.
And that applies to female mechanics and pilots, gay footballers, black police officers etc

2-3%, according to the DoE.

Where did I say that? Please don't put words into my mouth

Do we even know what proportion of nursery staff are male?

Having worked in nurseries in a operational capacity rather than a caring one peering through the window so to speak
I am amazed there aren’t more deaths. It is literally testament to how robust children are that they survive some of the day-to-day behaviours.

By that logic it would be better if they were just sexually abused. At least they’ve survived.
Madness

I saw the case pop up on my Facebook this morning oddly enough - the details are terrible

Yes I think some proper analysis and reasearch needs to be done here too. If it does transpire to be the case then actually I think given the incredible vulnerability of such young children it could definitely be argued under the equality act that there was a reasonable exception for nurseries to be allowed to only employ female staff for intimate care / direct care of the youngest children.

My fear that this type of thing could be becoming more common because of images of child abuse being available online and abusers disseminating information and ideas about how to do things like get jobs at nurseries.

I agree. She did intentionally ignore her, be rough with her and generally neglect her.

Banning men would largely prevent any risk of sexual abuse but what about the risks of other types of neglect and abuse that happens in nurseries?

Nobody is saying women don't abuse kids. We are saying men are more likely to commit sexual abuse.

Right - she didn't intend to kill her. Not sure that's much comfort to the parents

But she didn’t intend to kill her otherwise it would’ve been murder not manslaughter
Whereas sexually abusing them, the intention is very clear, one cannot accidentally sexually abuse a child. Does that need saying?

This has recently been debated in Australia where they found a disproportionate number of male pedophiles were drawn to childcare.
I can't post links as am on the Tube with dodgy Wifi, but anyone interested can Google.

It would be better to compare like to like.

why would a woman want to work in senior management positions,

Compare a man who wants to work in a nursery with young, non verbal babies for a meager pay check is clearly a very different hypothesis to a woman seeking to work in senior management roles.

The child was suffocated and her cries were ignored. She had also been shouted at earlier that day more than once by the nursery manager - who got 14 years for manslaughter

So if a male nursery staff was recruited to your DD’s nursery, you’d remove her??

I wouldn't put a child under 3 in nursery. My DD started preschool aged 3 and toilet trained. However, if she'd needed changing, I would've stipulated that a male worker wasn't to do it. Any decent setting (and I've worked in some) would respect that.

In New Zealand, they are degree educated in the most part and those that aren’t are closely supervised by those who are.

I agree they should be paid more.

And whilst that’s a serious case of neglect and it’s awful should never be allowed to work in childcare ever again
That’s not the type of abuse that we’re concerned with when males are in nursery environments
The beanbag baby incident was not murder. It wasn’t purposeful outright intention to harm/unalive the child.
Raping them is exactly that.

What is really needed is a good piece of research to happen into how many people of either sex are working directly with children in nurseries and how many have been have been investigated / charged / convicted of crimes against children in their care in the past few years broken down by type of crime and their sex.

If there really is evidence that nurseries are being deliberately targeted by significant numbers of male pedophiles without prior convictions then surely it would then be legally possible for nurseries to only employ women if they wished.

I would remove my DC from the nursery.
Yes.
Surely that is allowed? I also wouldn't hire a male nanny or au pair.