Male staff in nursery’s

[Itsoneofthose]

Ok, hear me out.. I know this is controversial but today I was shown around a nursery for the first time. I’m dreading leaving my little one, only because I’ll miss her and worry about her. I don’t think my worry is out of proportion or anything like that though. But today I saw two male nursery nurses. Now, I know there are many men who are great with kids, and not all men are a threat to children (obviously) and women can also potentially pose a threat to children but I just don’t know how I feel about male nursery staff. Hmmm. I know I’ll be shot down in flames for this. Nursery’s are well regulated etc etc. I just can’t help feeling a bit uneasy about the whole thing. Has anyone else experienced these thoughts? AIBU

As a mother of a 15 year old, who is what some might call a 'late bloomer' I find that comment quite disgusting frankly.

@FizzyBisto that's a funny analogy, it made me smile, but I'm not sure it works. I suppose I could choose a nursery with no potential pirates but young women of Somali origin or heritage, living in the UK and working in a nursery, are unlikely to have access to ships and machine guns. Whereas most sex offenders are male and it's not too tricky to find childcare without any male staff.

Another paedophile with a clean (until now) DBS working in multiple children's settings to add to the ever growing list.
Babysitter, St Johns Ambulance and Registered Children's Nurse were just 3 of his roles, as well as scout leader:

https://www.sussex.police.uk/news/sussex/news/court-results/former-hove-scout-leader-jailed-for-dozens-of-child-sex-offences/

I send you love and sympathy. I feel the same. I speak as: 1.victim of all sorts of harassment and assault by males (men and boys) , including serious sexual assualt. I have also had inappropriate comments and touching by a male teacher at secondary school. 2. Someone who has worked in nurseries and schools and knows how often they are working under 'exceptional circumstances' eg. Not staffed as they should be (under supervision). I have seen lone male staff toileting girls as young as 4 years old. 3. Someone who has read a lot of research: look at the information, NSPCC, Everyone's invited, Centre of Expertise of Child Sexual Abuse, Internet Watch Foundation.. . You will find that: 90% (should I write that again to clarify??.... 90% minimum...) of physical and sexual assault against children is by males (men or boys). OBVIOUSLY all male employees who abuse (including rape etc) children in an institutional setting had a clear DBS at the time. MOST children (all babies obvs) are unable to recognise or sometimes even remember what has happened to them, perhaps ever, some MANY very young children (eg nursery age) only recall the abuse decades later and MANY never report it. If assaults are reported:MOST of the men who commit these assaults will not be prosecuted due to lack of evidence (therefore will keep a clear DBS) . The information is out there, even if you are lucky (?) enough to be in the... 1%??? Of women who have never experienced or witnessed yourself men or boys constantly harrassing or abusing women or children. I think there is a huge amount of willful ignorance going on. Love to anyone who suffers PTSD from having been abused (by a male) in your childhood of who has anxiety for the safety of your own children. I have lost a lot of sleep and am not being given options which assure me of my children's safety (eg. Single sex toileting and no lone male supervision). Please know you are not alone and do not allow yourself to be gaslit by a society telling you you should not have any fears around men as potentially dangerous, especially to women and children, in particular girls. This just doesn't match the facts. X

I do respect male nursery nurses. They are paid next to nothing (like female nursery staff), parents have no respect for them (like female nursery staff) and on top of that they have to deal with the fact that people assume they must be paedeophilles because otherwise they wouldn't work with children.
Men committing violent/sexual crimes against children obviously does happen but mostly within the family unit. Of course some people do get in who shouldn't but either you trust nursery staff or you don't. If you don't look elsewhere for childcare
You can't just decide 50% of the population can't apply for a certain job because some parents don't like it. Not surprising there's a shortage of nursery staff.

I own a childcare setting, the kids love the male staff and gravitate towards them more than us female. I think because it’s not the norm. The checks will be in place so you’re being a bit unreasonable

Drives me mad when these threads fill up with people parroting that most abuse is by family members. Yes, BECAUSE OF EASY ACCESS. Extend access to your preverbal children to other men, who you haven’t spent years getting to know and decided to trust, and obviously you increase the risks to them.

Honestly need a bingo card for these threads. I see we also have a full complement of ‘every male nursery staff member i’ve met is amaaaaazing and so much better than women’ 🤢

Preverbal, verbal. Wherever there is access there is risk.

https://www.boltburdonkemp.co.uk/abuse-claims/where-does-abuse-happen/scouts/scouts-abuse-map/

Everyday in the news we see lots of men caught for viewing child abuse images - often serious abuse, category A images pf babies being tortured etc.

Some woman are caught too but it seems to be much rarer.

This makes it clear there is a greater risk when men are minding children - even if most men are good.

Abusers are attracted to jobs that give them access to victims.

Children’s safety comes before the rights of people to work in whatever job they like.

Nursery work is poorly paid so what is attracting people to work there? Hopefully it is that they find babies and toddlers brilliant fun and want to help them learn and develop. That positive motivation is something that men or women could have.

But with so few men working in the area and so many men watching videos of child abuse I don't think that it is an irrational concern that people have.

Surely however we can't bar either sex from any form of paid employment so the solution has to be well run and managed nurseries with good safeguarding policies.

This would also help with the cases I have been reading about of women (who presumably were doing it because it was the only job they could get and actually hated young children) behaving in a cruel and neglectful way to the children in the nurseries they worked at.

98% of sex offenders are men.

All it takes is one bad egg unfortunately.

Ultimately the decision will be led by insurance companies who deal in risk.
Once enough affected families sue enough nurseries for failing to protect their children from sexual predators, most nurseries will revert to hiring only females or pay exorbitant insurance rates for the pleasure of hiring male carers.

I presume that would be illegal to charge different insurance premiums for male and female employees. It was made illegal to charge men more than women for car insurance, even though that was based on the consequences of more typically reckless, impetuous and faster male driving behaviour which is statistically riskier in itself, but not actual a deliberate will to knowingly commit a crime.

Do companies that employ women in vast-majority-male occupations have to pay higher insurance premiums for them on the basis that e.g. a female builder is typically much less physically strong than a male builder, so she may be less able to hold heavy materials in place whilst fixing them or more likely to drop a hod of bricks and do somebody an injury?

Do banks with Indian employees have to pay more for workplace insurance for them, purely based on their nationality, because statistically a very high proportion of online and telephone scammers also happen to be Indian (as in fact do something like one sixth of the world population!)?

Back to nurseries, though, how about if insurance companies charged much higher premiums for female staff who don't have children of their own, on the basis that mothers have gone a long way to proving their ability to look after their own children safely without the authorities needing to get involved; whereas the non-mothers are a completely unknown quantity by comparison - and if there's any reason to suspect that they may not actually ever want children of their own (as opposed to not yet having had them, but planning on them) and yet they're still seeking to have access to young children in their career - surely that must make them a much bigger risk, eh?

It's all very minority report.

All of that may be true but when enough nurseries are put out of business because they employed a paedophile, it will have an impact on parents with babies and toddlers who may decide to opt for male-free nurseries or make other arrangements. It will also have an impact on other nurseries who will fear going bankrupt in the event they hire one bad egg.

There's no way of ensuring without a shadow of a doubt that you haven't employed a paedophile. Even though the vast majority of people who turn out to be paedophiles are male, you can't guarantee that no female employee could possibly be.

I also find it strange that people only ever seem to focus on sexual abuse, as though other forms of abuse either don't exist or are no issue. Surely nobody believes that no female nursery worker would ever hit, scream at, neglect, leave hungry or dirty all day or otherwise be cruel to any of her young cares, knowing that they are preverbal and so she can get away with it?

Yes, Vanessa George was a very rare female example of an abuser working in a nursery, but do you think any of the parents of the children that she abused were consoled in any way by the fact that at least she wasn't a man that they'd employed?

Other forms of abuse are awful and robust processes are required to reduce them to the bare minimum and to keep abusers from being able to look after children in the future too.

There is nothing strange about the focus on sexual abuse on this thread.
This particular thread is in relation to a convicted pedophile who sexually assaulted very young children in his care.

Other threads deal with other forms of abuse.

I would not be tolerant of any woman slapping, pinching or hurting a baby in any way but there is a whole other level of horror involved when a baby or toddler is sexually assaulted.

And the law says an employer is not allowed to discriminate by Gender. So shall we scrap that legislation

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-49684939

You can have exceptions to any rule of law.
We have them in the Equality Act to keep men out of women only spaces so this would not be a first.

It is legal to discriminate on the basis of sex where the objective is safety related and it is first and foremost about child safety in this scenario.

I'm flabbergasted that so many people on MN put men's rights ahead of the safety of babies and toddlers. I assume they think sexual abuse of very young children is vanishingly rare but unfortunately it's becoming far more common as a result of the internet and the pervasiveness of every kind of porn imaginable.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/26/pornography-driving-teens-child-abuse-material-charities-police

Sadly some women sexually abuse children - no-one is denying that.

The argument being made is that as 98% of convicted sex offenders are male, it would be in the best interest of babies and toddlers to exclude all unrelated males from caring for them in nurseries to remove most but not all obviously the risk of sexual assault. Other measures are required to stop female carers from abusing children and selling the images on the internet to paedophiles as this woman has done.

Babies and toddlers are non-verbal and so exceptionally vulnerable - older children can at least tell a parent what is happening to them.

Men and women are equal in the eyes of the law (allegedly anyway).
However, there are distinct patterns of behaviour associated with each sex and our prisons reflect this whether people like this reality or not.

Women represent over half the general population but only 4% of the prison population because far far more men engage in criminal activities than women.

Most of the women who end up in jail are there for much less serious crimes than their male counterparts - not paying a TV licence is a recurrent reason, shop-lifting is another.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/637f3cc1d3bf7f153b8b3232/statistics-on-women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2021-.pdf

Being equal does not mean we are the same and women do not represent the same risk to babies and toddlers that a significant minority of men clearly do.

Not a nursery but similar vulnerability. My son works in community care to support himself at uni. When he first started a lot of clients and families were very similar in their thinking. I asked him if it bothered him ... His response was ... Sadly some men are predators and it doesn't cause me harm for them to be cautious. I am there to care for them and that care includes making sure everyone is happy and comfortable. He's very lucky he has built up very strong rapport, has a lot of respect and always makes sure he works side by side with a female member of staff.

My point is, a nursery should allow parents to choose who is providing personal care. Forcing situations is just another scenario where a woman's voice and feelings are dismissed for a man. If the nursery are willingly to only allow female staff to handle intimate care then I'd try and give them a go and watch carefully

Even before the two awful cases of recent months, I would never send my DC to nurseries with male staff. YANBU.

For people saying they wouldn’t send their DC to nurseries with male staff, what happens if the nursery you send them to suddenly employs a male member of staff?