To ask about your experience with male nursery staff

[GloMum]

My daughter will be starting pre-reception and her key worker at the nursery is male. As a whole, the class will be overseen by this teacher plus two more female members of staff. Does anyone have experience with male nursery staff, especially in regards to caring for girls.

Said abuse being done by women...

He was absolutely fantastic, and really got into properly playing with the children at their level, whilst being really firm over boundaries. The children LOVED him and my daughter was distraught when he left. Several years later we still see him at our local leisure centre, and he'll have my DD bellowing his name down the corridor at him in great excitement.

There are three male workers at my dgc age 3, nursery. In truth they are all a bit ‘misfity’ (DD calls them the ‘undatables’ - and are not unlike some of the chaps I worked alongside when I did care in the community while at Uni as a mature student. They seen kind and harmless enough but it was a shock for me at first as had not until recently come across it before.
One is definitely not what you would call ‘a natural’ and I think would rather be anywhere else than working with kids l, but I imagine that’s true if some of the school leaver girls also.

What is wrong with you? I've reported your comment

Our nursery has 3 male practitioners predominantly being in the preschool room (age 3 upwards) and a male member of staff in the office. From what DD says, it seems the men help the boys with toileting / changes and the women with the girls. I must say though that it is absolutely refreshing to see such dedicated staff working in early years and great role models for the boys at the nursery.

I was highlighting the ridiculousness of the OP. Pretty much what they and several other posters are insinuating. But thanks for policing the thread ✊️

DD attends a nursery with a male member of staff. He's not her key worker but she adores him. She's 2.5, so reasonably verbal, and hasn't had a bad word to say about him (unlike some of the female staff members... nursery workers, be aware that the children in your care do actually talk to their parents about how you speak to them 🫩). I don't think you can ever be 100% certain of how another person is treating your child when you're not there, but I certainly dont have any particular misgivings about this staff member on account of his sex. If anything, I wish we had more men in early years education. There's a great episode of Dr Becky's 'Good Inside' podcast that touches on how the education system is so skewed towards girls, partly due to it being staffed almost exclusively by women. I would welcome more male nursery and primary school teachers.

My twin girls started nursery at 3 months and had a male keyworker who did all personal care including feeds and nappy changes. He was also DS' keyworker when he was in the baby room.

He was so great that he's now also our go to babysitter.

Some stories don’t get as much coverage.

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-nursery-worker-arrested-after-10003949

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14862687/amp/male-childcare-worker-charged-melbourne.html

https://www.daynurseries.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1617167/devon-nursery-closes-following-allegations-of-sexual-assault

I've worked with several male nursery staff and they've all been fine - bit lazy compared to female staff but parents always think they are amazing for some reason 😂

They were required to do exactly the same role in terms of nappy changing and sleep routines as anyone else.

I was a nurse early in my career (changed to something else) including changing kids nappies, boys and girls. I understand the concerns, obviously, but there has to be trust involved, especially if we're working towards an equal society.
I also, obviously, changed my own kids nappies when they were little.

If a dad said he couldn't do childcare or cooking because that's traditionally woman's work, or that he wasn't happy with your pilot being a woman, I wonder if people would say that was ok. Would we want our sons OR daughters told what career they can choose? Some societies segregate men and women, and generally women have much harder lives because of that. When I was a kid, we seemed to welcome all people and not prejudge them based on their gender/skin colour etc, yet now it seems things are going backwards.

when I looked for a nursery for DD I feel ashamed to say I would not have let her go to one where there was a male in the toddler class doing nappy changes.
Very judgemental I know.

Since then I have had to have a long hard look at myself and ensure I don’t pass to DD my judgements as she then went on to have the most amazing male teacher when she was 4 and I would choose him way before any of his female equivalent. He was super and she loved him.

So yes, we have these judgements but sometimes we can be wrong- I was.

My DC went to a nursery with a male worker in the toddler room. I observed that he took jokes too far, for example DC was scared of hoovers and I saw this worker put the hoover on and chase DC with it while I was queueing to collect at the end the day once. It got to the point that if he answered the door in the morning, DC would try to run away, screaming in blind panic and fighting me to get away. I don't know WTF went on at that nursery but my DC got an unexplained injury and when I raised it the manager outright refused to look into anything and tried to claim the injury must have happened at home when it clearly couldn't have done. I had to pull my child out, and years later the child still has the scar from the injury. After my experience, and on top of what I know about crime stats etc from child safeguarding courses for my own job, I'd be extremely wary of any male trying to get access to young children who aren't verbal and can't tell anyone what's happening. That might be irrational but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
Not interested in arguing this with the pick me/cool girls crowd, just posting my experience for OP.

Not interested in arguing this with the pick me/cool girls crowd, just posting my experience for OP.

Why is someone who disagrees with you or has had a good experience of a male nursery employee a pick me girlor one of the cool girls crowd? I disagree with you and I'm a 69 year old grandma who has never been cool in her entire life.

Were these incidences of abuse and manslaughter carried out by male members of staff?
I generally enjoy having male members of staff (just as with females there's the odd one that's lazy or just plain useless), it brings a different energy when you have both and I think for children a mix of staff, male/female, young/older, from different places etc is a great start in life for them.

Not UK but there’s a horrific case of a male nursery worker in Australia in the news at present . (Warning extremely disturbing)

https://www.ntnews.com.au/news/breaking-news/man-26-charged-with-sexually-abusing-children-at-melbourne-childcare-centre/news-story/b55633b3a8583ef01c1e323d12334133

And yes there have been horrific cases involving female nursery workers too but men commit about 98% of sex crimes so they, as a class, are a much, much higher risk than women. That’s reality not prejudice.

There was a man in the nursery/EY team for my boys and he was just one of a team of 4 or 5 who were in at any one time. It turned out that DS1's year group had only 4 girls out of 20 odd and some of those boys had no competent and present men in their lives so it was good for them to have a man interacting with them in a positive way.

But as you say most abuse (including sexual) in nursery settings are by women.

I didn’t actually say that in my post because I personally don’t have any statistics on that. But it’d hardly be surprising if it’s true because the vast majority of nursery workers are female. Men are very much in a minority in childcare.

Vanessa George’s name has always stuck in my mind because of how comparatively rare it is for a woman to sexually abuse children. I have read hundreds of stories about men doing the same and beyond the infamous murderers/sex offenders like Fred West or Ian Brady I couldn’t name any because there are just so many of them.

Of course you’re never going to entirely eliminate risk because someone has to look after children but men commit 98% of sexual abuse and also the majority of violent crime so men as a class are much higher risk in these respects. I don’t have children but I’ve worked in childcare in the past and though I think that male nursery workers can be a positive thing in many respects I would never be comfortable with my hypothetical child receiving personal care from a man.

Presumably even the child's father, your father and any men in your life too then.

It’s not unreasonable for women to have reservations about a male we barely know doing nappy changes etc on a nonverbal child. We all know that the vast majority of child abuse is by males and that these offenders may be motivated to great lengths to gain access to children.

For preschool age verbal children having a mix of female and male practitioners is great. I’m sure in almost all cases it’s great for younger children too but it depends on how you weigh the potential risk.

You really can’t see a difference between the child’s Father and a man who is a relative stranger who you are not present with giving a child personal care?

Again as I said we cannot eliminate all risk, because yes parents can abuse children too and also some female childcare workers but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to minimise it and considering the staggering difference in the rates of sex crimes between men and women? Having only female childcare workers hugely reduces the risk of sexual abuse.

My DS had two male nursery staff; one was still there for my DD. Both from age 1. I assume they changed nappies! Because they did everything else. They were both outstanding educators who my children loved.

My DDs current nursery has an all female staff but they have visiting e.g sports classes with male teachers.

All the recent stories I've seen of abusive nursery staff - which are terrible but rare - have involved women. I would have no issues with male nursery staff and would employ a male nanny/babysitter.