Would you hire a male babysitter?

[georgarina]

Why/why not?

I think you can have both.

I fully expect my husband to share equally in childcare and housework. I’m not comfortable with Dave from down the road looking after my children.

I see no tension whatsoever with that.

Not sure if you read my post above, I was abused by a male babysitter known to my family. Boy from the village, his sister also baby sat, parents knew my parents. Whether you know them is neither here nor there when it comes to this type of sexual abuse.

Sorry this was in response to @Lunar27

@MissChanandlerBong80

But that's not the issue is it? The issue is parents raising their children to fear men they either know or don't know, purely on the basis that they're potential abusers. Therefore, they shouldn't be allowed to look after children 1-2-1.

Deciding not to hire a male babysitter is one thing and not that onerous. But telling your kids why is another.

A side issue of course is representation. If we all accept that representation has a big impact on our perceptions (for work, TV, media etc) then it stands to reason that if your children are only ever looked after by women or just dad, then it's an odd scenario. I honestly don't know what the answer is as women are free to choose who looks after their kid but we cannot deny that representation is also a factor.

I wouldn't hire anyone I didn't know to babysit my kids. However I did use a male baby sitter for my children. He was one of my DDs key worker at nursery (and by coincidence also the husband of one SILs friends) and never had any issues.

I wouldn't hire a male or female babysitter. It's not something I'm comfortable with at all

Nope. Not a chance.
I signed up to a childcare website and the first few responses were from men. It just gave me an uneasy feeling.

(My kids were 2 and 3 at the time. )

But women drivers are more likely to have parking accidents. Women are more likely to scrape the car whilst parking men total it driving around. Unfortunately in a valet situation with parking the woman is the much bigger risk and wouldn't be anywhere near my car.

The risk analysis is hard. The consequences are HIGH but the actual risk is low.

It would be interesting to know what the actual risk was. Men do commit more sex crimes. But what is the risk of an individual male?

On the one hand the risk might be increased with strangers because men wanting to do something bad are possibly more likely to be attracted in to a role like that.
On the other hand it’s more likely to be someone you know.

I can totally understand people wanting to minimise the risk. Statistically it would be interesting to know, but hard to calculate I think.

My son (now 19) has babysat for 4 different friends families. They all knew him. The children (all over 4) loved his relaxed, easy going, happy to read endless stories and probably let them stay up too late.

I suppose (as a parent) I can understand some of the concerns, but to say never is very 😢. Common sense and judgment should surely be the deciding factor. A girl could surely also be irresponsible, leave them alone, invite boys around etc, and therefore sex shouldn’t be the deciding factor.

@itsgettingweird ideally no, they would be a last resort. I've never had a stranger babysit. But if push came to shove and my only option was a stranger then I'd consider a local woman with relevant experience. I wouldn't entertain a bloke.

90% of child abusers are known to children. Family, close friends.

It is very rare when it's someone random.

Already explained I wouldn’t leave my children with a random person because I don’t want a stranger in my house or around my children not just for abuse reasons but because I’m uncomfortable with people I don’t know looking after my kids and I don’t want unknown people in my house my children also wouldn’t like it. I don’t need to use a babysitter so why would I hire one for the sake of it? I don’t need a random babysitter and it wouldn’t occur to me to use one, the only person that ever has my children is my mum but I would leave them with others if I trusted them and knew them well enough.

And also to add and what has been pointed out already, strangers don’t generally have unsupervised access to people’s children , in their home alone, I’m sure if they did the percentage would change to reflect that but strangers don’t usually have the opportunity so I won’t be giving it to anyone, my oldest is 11 and I’ve never hired anyone to babysit her.

Haven't commented for years on here
But as a mum of 3 fabulous sons absolutely enraged by this post

I would have trusted them with a male babysitter, and many families have trusted them in return

Utterly sick to death of the demonstration of boys

Absolutely not and I would judge anyone stupid enough to do so.

I'm sure many wouldn't mind though - I see idiots take risks with their children regularly.

Strangers don't usually have time to groom children over a longer period, though. (although of course they would have in this scenario, if they were hired regularly).
Agree that it's better to never take chances, though. If you can reduce or eliminate a risk, it's of course much better to do so.

Children and women are 'sick to death) of being victims of (not all) men though @bittertwisted.

And safeguarding must take precedence over hurt feelings.

Surely children are more often abused by male relatives than by strangers?

Enraged? People are entitled to not want your sons looking after their children. I have a son, he’s lovely. But I don’t expect others that don’t know him, or even those that do, to want him to look after their children.

Of those people that are a risk to children, the overwhelming majority are men.

This week on my local area news page there are police appeals for 2 sexual assaults of teenage girls on public transport and a rape of a teenage girl, sorry but no I don’t believe it’s as rare as people like to make out, strangers just have less opportunity to abuse children as most people are sensible enough not to leave their child with a stranger.

I had a male sitter for a few months when I was kid. We loved him. He was our neighbor so my DPs knew him well.

i wouldn’t mind a male sitter if I knew them really well.

There’s no equivalent though with your example.

Men are statistically more likely to drive dangerously, crash, drink drive, than women, so this would be a clear example of discrimination.

Estimates put paedophilia rates at 1-2% of the male population. Disturbingly this means that in my village alone there are potentially up to 20 paedophiles.

It’s clear that people are going to have their own opinions on this matter, but it’s so depressing when women centre men all the time, despite there being risks, and that they put women down for being cautious.