Another male nursery worker

I chose a childcare arrangement that included no male workers, and where I could be sure none would ever be employed. I got a lot of eye rolls and aggressive anecdotes about how fandabbydozie Mr so and so was at their kids' nursery. Turns out my prejudices were spot on. I don't care about the project of 'teaching men' how to 'be good role models' when it's the safety of my children on the line.

No regrets at all. Sometimes prejudice is justified and this is the best example I can think of.

What a lot of word salad in that article.

The nursery sector is actively recruiting men as child-carers for a number of reasons Nursery World - Can we double the number of men in childcare?

Holes in his trousers deliberately. What a weirdo. I'd hate to be his mother.

I am really confused by the rest of the staff in this setting too.

I run a kids camp every year.
I do safeguarding trainign for all the leaders before the camp begins.
One of the basics of safeguarding training is to say it is the responsibility of all of us. That if we see anything we are uncomfortable with, it is our duty to report that to the safeguarding lead.
Then the Safeguarding Lead will follow it up.

So when did the staff in this setting last do safeguarding training? And who did it? and how well trained were they?
In schools it is updated annually.
What are the guidelines for nurseries?

In our church Sunday school - one hour per week with mutiple adults in the room - they are not allowed to help unless they have safeguarding training.
Again, one of the basics is - if you see anything you are not happy with - report.

I cannot get my head around staff in a childcare setting being unhappy with another member of staff and not reporting.

10% of the work force commit 90% of the sexual abuse.

Removing that 10% automatically reduces the sexual abuse by 90%.

That’s a really quick and effective fix and a great foundation to start making other changes.

The problem is that no one wants to pay for the increased wages. When the Gov NI increase came in last year, most nurseries passed the cost onto parents. Several of the parents at my daughter's nursery left as a result.

Various governments have tried to increase the professionalism of the sector by setting higher qualifications for staff, only to have to back track as it isn't workable - if you can get these higher qualifications you are probably going to go and work somewhere else with better pay. And the staff who can't get the qualifications would have to leave.

If there aren’t enough suitable applicants for jobs, we need to raise wages, not employ unsuitable people.

Funny how unions and professional organizations kept women out of as many jobs as possible to keep male wages up. But jobs that are only suitable for women remain low paid, even though the applicant pool is small.

And one instance of CSA is one too many. I don't disagree. I'm not sure if you read the bit where I said my own children were subjected to abuse in a childcare setting. I have spent the last two years advocating for changes in the law, I've been working with our local council, inspection body and regulators to change laws allowing unsupervised and unchecked access to children. I'm in no way minimising the crimes, our family has been devastated and changed forever by our experiences.

What I will say is that I don't think that banning males completely is the correct way to go about fixing the problem. It's a band aid over a number of wider issues around misogyny, gender roles, equality, sex, pornography, and the value of childcare as a role.

How do we raise a generation of men to be equal caregivers, to see childcare and education as important and valuable work, to be (good) stay at home dads, to nurture and protect children and babies, if we say to them from the very start that they are too dangerous to look after them?

And in my case it would have made zero difference anyway.

In quite a lot of other species males take care-giving roles in relation to other males' offspring. The animal kingdom's not much help either pro or anti males in nursery work, we are faced with a very human problem here.

Well while we all await for your ‘utopia’ like world to come about in tbe meantime we ought to address the imminent risk which is the rape of children being on the rise. If sufficient funding isn’t provided the easiest and cheapest way to tackle this is banning males.

“It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut”

The “nut” being.. the rape of babies!!!

Jesus fucking Christ.

I don't want to live in a society that openly views men as a species that is so dangerous to babies and toddlers as to ban them from working with them. It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut, not to mention the message that sends about how men are viewed. We need to raise standards for all, and safety of all children. I want to live in a society that considers childcare to be the most important and valuable job, and that can be carried out by the most suitable loving and nurturing people. I want male children to grow up to know it's ok to grow up to be that person, and I want female children to grow up to expect the best, the highest standard of behaviour from men.

I fully appreciate that the vast majority of CSA is carried out by men. We have a massive problem with misogyny which is not getting better. I don't think villainising someone because of their sex alone is helpful to that.

I also will say that the unthinkable HAS happened in my family to my children, who were abused in childcare. We are awaiting trial dates just now. The perpetrator was a woman. It has been completed and utter hell to the extent that we don't send our children to any external childcare at all now, and only use school and school nursery (which has a male teacher).

This nursery was in Bristol, which has dozens of nurseries, and currently has hundreds of vacancies for childcare workers.

The staff would not have been risking their livlihoods by reporting their concerns, if the nursery closed down they would have no problem in getting another job.

At least some of the staff were uneasy with his behaviour, but none of them raised concerns.

Edited to add - staff turnover is high in the childcare sector, so changing jobs is very common, so the risk of having to move should not have been a huge issue for the staff who were concerned about his behaviour.

Men make up a tiny proportion of nursery staff. It’s not going to cause the industry to collapse to say it is a female-only role. It would be infinitely cheaper than any of your suggestions; not to mention effectiveness.

Yes, the entire institution is severely understaffed and underfunded - which is just one of the reasons why a blanket ban on men isn't going to happen.

If you want to start campaigning to get a law through parliament to ban male nursery workers then by all means have at it. But I'm telling you now, it's not going to happen.

It isn’t the case of ‘energies’ it’s about money. The entire institution is severely underfunded and understaffed so your suggestion wouldn’t get off the ground would it? For adequate safeguarding you need proper funding and that won’t happen anytime soon.

The bar for qualifying for this sort of role is so low that literally anyone can walk through the door. That being said a proportionate and immediate safeguarding measure to introduce would be to ban male workers whilst we all wait for the industry to be overhauled.

It is proportionate.

We have female-only jobs across other sectors. This should be no different.

Your concerns pale in to insignificance when measured against the rape of babies.

If there is a severe safeguarding issue at a nursery, it gets shut down. It isn't like schools, which won't normally close. But nurseries are different. And then staff will be out of a job. So staff don't always raise the alarm.

I'm an ex teacher.
I remember in the 90s we really wanted more male primary teachers because of the lack of fathers and good male role models present in the lives of the kids on the estate where I was teaching.
But in the discussion one statistic quoted was that 90% of the abuse found in childcare settings were committed by men, who made up only 10% of the staff.

I'll never forget that statistic, it really haunts me, if we removed 10% of the staff we would get rid of 90% of the abuse.
But those were also in the days before DBS checks and when a lot of things that we consider good practice now were not present.

And then there is still that need for male role models. We had 4 male teachers in the school and they were all lovely, and the boys idolised them, but.....

It's not a proportionate means. It's not even going to get off the ground as a law.

We would better invest our energies by ensuring stronger safeguarding measures in nurseries which cover any and all staff - for example cameras or working in pairs.

I completely agree.
Absolutely nothing should be prioritised over child protection

It is entirely proportionate when safeguarding children from CSA outweighs the risk of discrimination much like female only spaces, think domestic abuse shelters etc.