Would you hire a male babysitter?

[georgarina]

Why/why not?

My husband is even more against male babysitters than I am. So let’s not act like it’s only us razor toothed women who are so hateful to men not wanting this.

Plenty of men know that men are more of a risk and don’t want it. If I dared to leave our baby with a man my husband I’m sure would veto and not allow it.

Men also know that most sex offenders are men so you all can stop pretending that only women have this feeling.

Yes if I knew them very well and trusted them.

Never. But I wouldn’t leave my kids with a childminder who wasn’t a friend or family regardless of their gender.
98% of convicted child sex offenders are male.

I'm not saying just let any old bloke look after your kids, of course not. That would be absurd.

But just as you take precautions with seatbelts etc you can reduce the risk when it comes to leaving your kids in the care of other people. That's literally all I'm saying. If I trust a given male as much as a female to babysit then I see no real reason to say no to one of them simply because they are a bloke because I've assessed the risk to the point I trust each of them equally.

Never have and never will use a babysitter.

No of course not all men are sex offenders but the vast majority of sex offenders are men. I don't make decisions about who looks after my kids based on who I might offend or whether I'm being sexist, I make decisions based on what I feel is right.

No. It is a fact that paedophiles are more often male. I do not believe males have a caring mothering instinct.

Nope.

What about males in other settings with access to children 1:1? Male teachers, doctors, nursery staff?

As a rule none of those people would be alone with your child. They certainly wouldn't be in your child's home alone with them.

Hired a babysitter once in a hotel. I kept going back.
Never bothered again!

I think this thread is an example of one of the many reasons why childcare still primarily falls on women though. Hard to push for equality of childcare if the prevailing opinion in society is that men are too incompetent and / or dangerous to look after children. It feeds into the narrative that childcare by default falls to women, it's a woman's job, and that men are being so good to help out when they do the most basic of tasks once in a blue moon.

This.

Posters on this thread who wouldn't 'hire' a babysitter at all, are not really relevant with their comments imo.

Nope. I'm on a local fb page for people seeing babysitters/nannies. There was a man replying to a lot of ads a while back. He is now awaiting trial for multiple counts or sexual abuse.

Only my brother or one of my nephews.

But then I wasn't keen on leaving ds with his df - who proved to be negligent and lacking in any common sense.

Yup. My son and his friends used to babysit for his younger siblings.

Great boys and it was good for my younger girls to have positive male role models in their lives coz their dad is a dick.

I wouldn't hire a stranger as a babysitter anyway, only ever family/friends I trust. Otherwise I use a nursery with many members of staff, all of whom are qualified.

The gender of the adults involved makes no difference.

Yes I probably would.

Children are statistically more at risk from members of their own family.

Wow, that's harsh.

I'm not saying just let any old bloke look after your kids, of course not. That would be absurd.

But just as you take precautions with seatbelts etc you can reduce the risk when it comes to leaving your kids in the care of other people. That's literally all I'm saying. If I trust a given male as much as a female to babysit then I see no real reason to say no to one of them simply because they are a bloke because I've assessed the risk to the point I trust each of them equally.

Exactly. DH's 18 year old nephew babysits for us regularly and he also babysits for my friends children ( often he has all the kids so we can go out together!) We all know him and trust him.

My DH has looked after our neighbours daughters a couple of times and I've left DS with my friends husband and her brother on a number of separate occasions.

There's a huge difference between a stranger babysitting and leaving your children with people you know and trust - male or female.

I do not believe males have a caring mothering instinct.
What rubbish.
I'm female and I've never had what you refer to as a 'mothering instinct'.
Me and my DH are equally caring individuals and are great parents though. I'm not better because i'm a woman.

You can't discriminate on the basis of sex

Of course you can. Why do you think there are exceptions in the equality act that allow us to do precisely this when it comes to protecting women and children?

Should we be able to discriminate against other protected characteristics because of statistics?

If you are hiring a bloody babysitter you can pick who the fuck you want. You would have to actively choose a man or a woman.
Stop trying to falsely compare other categories with sex.

The OP used the words ‘hire’ and ‘babysitter’. These words do not imply that the person is very well known to us. The OP did not ask if we would let close male family look after our children. They’ve probably been deliberately ambiguous and vague to cause conflict.🙄

Indeed all those talking about statistics should probably not let Thier children be looked after by their own family.

As a general rule no, but when DS and DD were 8 and 7, they had a male babysitter, he looked after them in day a few times and organised lots of fun games, he also gave them lunch etc. However, I trusted him and he is a great kid.

Another boy offered and I decided against it, he is a bit of a stoner and something just made me uncomfortable, however I do pay him to do dog walking and the dog likes him.

We've had other teenage girls some they loved others they hated, one collected DD from school twice a week for a year, and they had no rapport, I wasn't worried about safety but they did not get along.

Growing up my parents left me and my brother at home with our male housekeeper in the day, it was all fine and but they only did it when we were older.

Id be more interested in the mental impact all this is on your children, and how they learn to normalise social interactions with males. Living in a environment when their mother constantly claims men are one, some or all of the following Podophile/rapist/lazy/fat/old/bald/lacking in maternal instinct.

I'm just glad my parents and children how a rounded view on the world not the twisted narrative that lives on Mums Net perpetuated by the cacophony of male loathing spiel and story's that "my mate Sonia, told my sister Helen, who's friends with Barbra that some guy on Facebook, tried to talk to cherry's daughter and it turns out from Francis he`s a convicted rapist". 🙄

DS's childminder was male.

It was actually a wife and husband childminding team but on the days we needed it was mainly the husband who did drop off a pick up.

He was wonderful, came very highly recommended by the school and others in the area so had no qualms with him whatsoever.

I hated the fact that it felt weird to me as I am such a believer in the sexes being equal, but I can't deny there is always a worry about men in general.