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.

When mine were little it was all female key workers in their nurseries, no men at all, so I’m not sure how I would have felt about it. However I work in early years now, have done for the last 5 years and have came across a few amazing male keyworkers, they just seem to have a special quality around the children, ready for more noise, more rough and tumble and more ready to encourage risk taking, the children love them.

we do have one child who doesn’t like either male keyworker and refuses to get her nappy changed (just over 3) but everyone else is happy.

Yes she springs to my mind too precisely because sexual abuse of children by women is so comparatively rare. I can think of one other case that also comes to mind,not in a nursery though, again because of the relative rarity of it involving a woman and also because it was local(ish). Yet I couldn’t begin to tell you the names of the culprits, in the literally hundreds if not thousands of reports I’ve read in the news about male sex offenders because it’s far from rare.

Where is OP btw?

It’ll be wonderful and I second a PP that says for some young children it’ll be the first positive male role model they’ll encounter, which is a great thing.

Male sex offenders specifically in nurseries or in general?

Cant recall any about nursery staff, tbh.

Male nursery staff.

Male sex offenders generally as I’m talking about the difference in rates of sex crimes between men and women, though I have read about male childcare workers abusing children before and not everything gets reported on the big news sites plus the vast majority of childcare workers are female. Also as mentioned there’s a major case in Australia that’s in the news at present and another poster linked to some other reports too.

I Googled "Nursery staff struck off" and this was the first result

https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/glasgow-nursery-nurse-struck-after-30152324

Fair enough. Presently in England. Scottish news is very under-reported for some reason.

Fair enough.

Given best practice these days though, I still believe that more male nursery staff is a positive.

It's difficult/impossible to filter the fitness to practise register by profession never mind by sex, but a (very unscientific) Google suggests that 98% of nursery and childcare workers are women so you'd expected not just 98% of complaints to be about women, but 98% of sexual or violent behaviour complaints to be about women if it were equal. My experience tells me that's not the case across the register in general, but I don't have any figures to support that because it seems they're impossible to find either way!

I also agree that positive male role models are a good thing; I was just inclined to address the "you're being unfair and hysterical" type responses to the OP because there's some statistical evidence that tells us about statistics relating to characteristics of the perpetrators of violent and sexual crimes

Good. I would still tell her about private parts and never to sit in laps with males. But I'm cynic so I don't trust men working with children. It's a shame for the good apples but too many make nursery workers have offended so the trust is gone.

What an awful thing to consider. Men and women are both likely to abuse children if they are so sickly inclined.

There is safeguarding and making sure staff aren’t alone with children.

Going through life thinking everyone is danger is really sad especially if it’s just based on gender and in a safeguarded environment. The most likely place of abuse (very unfortunately) is in the hone - do people worry about their husband? Father? Uncles? Brothers? Cause if you don’t then your worry about male childcare workers is based on nothing.

Five minutes on Google and I’ve found dozens of stories from various countries including the UK. They’re out there even if the stories don’t make the big British news sites.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/20/daycare-worker-prison-sentence-sexual-touching-child-sydney-ntwnfb

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-04/qld-ex-childcare-worker-abuse-charges-named/102931896

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-11/pratik-bhattarai-childcare-worker-jailed-child-sexual-abuse/105036550

https://amp.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article301640854.html

https://www.wsmv.com/2024/12/07/he-was-monster-mother-victim-speaks-out-after-man-accused-raping-children-unlicensed-antioch-daycare/?outputType=amp

https://abc11.com/amp/post/Nc-man-ryan-olufs-charged-sexual-exploitation-girl-child-care-center-moore-co-1-million-bond/16362549/

https://www.kdll.org/local-news/2025-03-26/kenai-man-arrested-for-alleged-sexual-abuse-at-in-home-daycare-center

https://region.com.au/man-who-sexually-abused-four-year-old-at-daycare-given-18-months-jail/724332/

https://amp.kentucky.com/news/nation-world/national/article240837821.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2wrgd91w6o.amp

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jul/13/nursery-worker-jailed-eight-years

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-04/jail-for-tas-childcare-worker-who-sexually-abused-4yo-girl/102684050

https://kmyu.tv/news/local/ogden-daycare-worker-tanner-wayne-dobson-pleads-guilty-to-child-sexual-exploitation

https://www.nj.com/middlesex/2024/03/former-daycare-worker-gets-40-years-in-prison-for-sexual-assaults-of-multiple-children.html?outputType=amp

There are many more unfortunately.

Please can you provide information to support your suggestion that both men and women are 'likely' to abuse children, unless you're willing to acknowledge that it's more commonly men than women?

Also, as already demonstrated, safeguarding is a small part of the process required to keep children safe. If pre-employment checks were enough, there would be no safeguarding concerns raised, no prosecutions, and no sanctions on professional registrations. If you're including reports of concern under your use of "safeguarding", then remember that when a concern is raised it's because someone has already likely been harmed, and therefore harm is not prevented by this process - only further harm is potentially prevented.

It’s a fact that men are more likely to sexually abuse children than women and therefore children are statistically less safe with a male nursery worker.

That said, I have had very positive experiences with the two male nursery workers at my son’s nursery. They’re both brilliant.

Even though I agree the risk is higher with male nursery workers it is still very very unlikely to happen. Ask your nursery about their safeguarding protocols, be diligent with that.

Okay well the NSPCC state that .2% of boys and .8% of girls under 11 are reported abused (clearly it is more but this is their report).

90% of that was from someone they knew

A third of that was from another child.

So girls were 4 times more likely to be reported as abused. What about the statistics relating to the sex of the alleged perpetrator?

Exactly. Entirely unscientific but I would expect that a greater percentage of of fishermen both amateur and professional, die by drowning than say, skateboarders. Not because fishermen are more foolish or careless than skateboarders but because their hobby or career means that their job/hobby means that they are far more likely to spend a lot of time in close proximity to water. Just as women are far more likely than men to care for children(Either their own or as a childcare professional)

@Itallcomesdowntothis Also, worth noting that 0.8% of girls under 5 in the UK equates to almost 14,000 girls. That is not tiny.

This is a very, very sad post.

Our nursery has 3 male workers. We haven't had any problems and our DS really likes all of them. I take it a good indicator that he happily goes to them when they answer the door.

However, being completely honest, if I had the option of which sex looked after him, I would choose female. There have been a few awful news stories recently about male nursery workers. For those saying "what difference does sex make", my answer would be that sadly men are far more likely to be sexually motivated than women. But I am well aware children and babies are at more risk of other types of abuse, as has also been publicised in multiple stories recently.

But I wouldn't take him out of nursery based on the sex of the staff unless I had concerns (trans member of staff would be a different story, I'd be out of there like a shot).

Over the time my children have been at nursery they have both had a male member of staff as a key worker (DD and DS). DS loved it - he really bonded with him and I think it’s such a positive dynamic to have a male role model in caring roles. He played the guitar and sang to the kids and generally was just a lovely and easy going presence. I think we’re so programmed to think that men that want to work with children are weird or predatory that I felt my own concern peak a little but there was nothing at all wrong with it. DD also loved the chap who worked in her room - he was much more fun and enthusiastic than most of the women tbh - some of whom didn’t seem to be there because of a love of children but more because it was one of the acceptable career choices for them.

Based on my experience I don’t have a problem with it.

There was a young male skate-boarding nursery worker at my kids' nursery, he was brilliant, all the kids adored him.