Would you hire a male babysitter?

[georgarina]

Why/why not?

Would you leave them with a female stranger?

I ask because I wouldn't ever leave my ds with a stranger.

But I'd leave them with any member of either sex that I knew and believed I could trust.

If it was people I didnt know at all then id rather choose a woman or girl. If I knew them fairly well then I might well be ok with a male, depending on how they interact with the children but it makes me anxious. So many people are sexually abused in childhood. Its scary.
Obviously its not all men. Noone said it was, but a babysitter has a long time on their own with a child in private, unlike a teacher for example. Im cautious and make no apologies for that. The stakes are high

@BelperLawnmower

To be fair I would think twice about letting an unknown lady driver ferry my kids around. I'd have more confidence in a man.

Men are statistically far more likely to cause a collision, be injured in a collision or die in a collision than women.

So your preference there isn't based on statistics. Still your personal choice, of course, and you've every right to make it.

But it's rooted in false stereotypes and sexism in rather than data.

Men are statistically more likely to abuse. Not all men, but we can't know which ones so we use data to inform our decisions. For some than means no male babysitters, for others it doesn't.

But the driving example isn't equivalent at all, especially as male and female drivers don't even have accidents at the same level as one another. Men have them more often.

This is the flip side of this thread isn't it.

I wouldn't judge any parent for their choices but don't think it's possible to have it all ways round. You can't have this level of distrust in the opposite sex (justified or otherwise) without the downside of men not doing their fair share of parenting. This naturally leads to men being breadwinners etc etc.

This thread has definitely made for interesting reading and my conclusion is that women can't really trust men at all, either strangers or family. Makes me wonder why women even bother to have kids at all if the male threat is mostly known to them. I mean, how do women sleep at night when their husbands/partners are under the same roof?

I never had to, but if I had needed to, I would only trust his uncles, and my adult nieces male partners. I spend a lot of my work time in safeguarding meetings.

😅it is always a risk!

Well yeah, you can't raise your sons and daughters in a society which says "males shouldn't babysit, they're dangerous" / "be suspicious of male nursery workers" / "don't leave your children with men" / "don't let your children sleepover if there's not a woman to supervise" and then somehow expect the children you raise to magically turn into parents who play an equal role in rearing their own children. You're conditioning your daughters to think it's solely their job and your sons to be hands off.

Come on. Lack of opportunity to babysit has zero impact on someone's ability to parent their own child in the future.

Find this thread really depressing.

Not specifically, no.

But if the overwhelming message male and female children receive from society is that men are dangerous and shouldn't be involved in looking after children, what roles do you think they'll take on later? If they only ever experience female caregivers, what do you think they'll default to?

It's not a case of "I wasn't allowed to babysit one time in 2006 and now I refuse to ever change a nappy", it's a constant insidious message that men aren't to be trusted with childcare that children will receive and that they then replicate.

Men are everywhere. Nursery, school, youth groups, sports, hobbies, doctors etc. There are plenty of places men are around children. Not being wanted as a babysitter is not an insidious message. You know how they learn to be good fathers? By parenting their damn kids. Not by babysitting as teenagers.

It is an insidious subconscious message.

I don't think we can say "men should take an equal role in rearing children" whilst at the same time saying "it's too dangerous for men to look after my children". You can't have both. Either men can be trusted to play an active role in childrearing or they can't.

It's men you should feel depressed about - their fault entirely.

name changed to post this.

Absolutely no. For those saying “as long as I know them..” makes no difference- most sexual abuse of children is committed by men known to them of their family.

I was sexually abused as a child by a male babysitter, known to my parents. His family lived in the village. His sister also used to babysit and was lovely. I never disclosed and my parents never knew.

Don’t do it, it’s not worth the risk.

And yet some men manage perfectly well to understand that their sex is more likely to commit this sort of crime, but not let it hinder their parenting ability. My partner manages it, as do many men I know. They don’t use the fact that men are more likely to commit these crimes, as a reason or excuse to parent not well.

This ‘constant insidious message‘ also hasn’t stopped me trusting my Male partner. I took time to get to know him before deciding that he would make a good father. Being cautious of men is something I teach my daughter. But she sees her dad is a good man who is a capable, loving and involved father. She also sees that he is a supportive partner to me. She knows good men exist. Her expectations in a partner will hopefully be high, which is a good thing.

Men need to do better and women need to raise the bar.

Posted to soon.

In terms of jobs, the good men that want to be teachers or nursery workers will understand it’s not a personal attack. They will understand concerns about their sex, because those concerns are backed up by statistics. They won’t be alone with children anyway.

Yet I also know a male nanny who has a waiting list almost of parents wanting him to work for them so seems not everyone is worried but for me, I definitely would be.
As I said before, with girls especially those approaching puberty there's things like dressing to consider and so I would not employ a male babysitter for this alone not to mention other concerns.

I know that my partner is no danger to children and he is an excellent father. That does not mean everyone else has to trust him. Other parents have the right to not want him babysitting their children.

They are not discriminated at work if they want to work in childcare or teaching. Practices are in place to protect children in nurseries and schools. If an individual doesn’t want their child to have a male teacher, they will have to move school, the teachers rights are protected. Babysitting is very different.

The most important thing is to keep your child safe, if you are realist, you’d know what a thread boys/men are.
In today’s world with younger and younger boys having porn fried brains it’s even bigger risk.
And phone with cameras, who know what they’d do, film it and send it to their friends.

Second, your example about women/cars is wrong. Women are actually better drivers, so much so, that’s why women’s car insurence is lower than men.

I know, the number of predatory men out there is depressing indeed.

Seems to me that the biggest issue is people using unknown babysitters. I've never done this and would never, irrespective of them being male or female. So really it's a non issue and the risk is minimal anyway, unless you're the type to let anyone look after your kids.

Of course the elephant in the room is your granddad, uncle, brothers, cousins etc as it's clear that it's the person you already know. If it's this we're teaching our kids then that's really depressing.

Yes and we have done
We've actually had two - a nursery worker and a friends teenager both were excellent with the kids.
All babysitters checked the same way in our house not bothered about their sex just whether or not they have good references and some common sense.
Now we don't but only because our eldest son is old enough to be the babysitter.

People do get strangers off childcare.co.uk ive even known people to get (unknown) babysitter by advertising on Facebook 🤷‍♀️

People hire nannies to look after their children, it's almost seen as a status symbol to be able to afford one. These people are also complete strangers.

If it’s just because males make up 50% of the population, then you’d expect 50% of paedophiles to be male and 50% to be female, wouldn’t you?