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.

My daughter's nursery had one male member of staff, who wasn’t her keyworker but she liked him and often talked about the funny things he did. The nursery next door to her school (who provide the wraparound care) also have one male member of staff.

In both cases, they are working in the pre-school room
with three and four year olds. I don’t know if this was their preference, or whether the nursery managers acknowledged that parents might feel uncomfortable with a male member of staff looking after non-verbal children. When the vast majority of child sex abuse is carried out by men, it is statistically more of a risk than with female staff.

My theory is that while yes, there are dodgy men out there who may perhaps use nursery work as a way to access children, the reality is that these men are watched more closely than any other worker.

MOre imprtantly, I also believe that my definition, the vast bulk of male nursery workers are often among the best. the reason being siply that due to the way our society and culture works, men who choose to be nursery workers are doing so as an active choice. We always had lovely nursery workers but without a doubt, many of the women were there simply because it was a convenient job that they could get with little additional education or skills or while ithey were waiting to do something else. It means that the male nursery workers are almost all in the group of nursery workers who do it because they love it while for female nursery worers, this group is a smaller percentage.

The only downside of our male nursery worker, who was also DS' preferred babysitter fr a while, was that he did rather drop to male stereotypes.... when he babysat, I'd come home to the lounge in a complete state! he'd let DS play with all his toys, put him to bed and then just sit and watch tv. drove me mad!

Why are you obsessed with sex crimes? There are many types of abuse, any of them can leave psychological scars for life and have nothing to do with sex. With women I would be worried about other types of abuse.

Of course there are other types of abuse but men are also much more likely to commit violent crimes than women. Even if women as a class spend far more time looking after children so you may expect more cases of women harming children whom they care for as they are far more often the main carer. But when we are talking about young pre-verbal children in a childcare setting who require personal care then sexual abuse is going to be the greater concern as it provides more opportunity to be alone with the child and it requires intimate care so it is easier to disguise abuse as part of personal care. Some activities are inherently riskier. This also applies to adult safeguarding hence why male Drs can see female patients for most things alone but if an intimate examination is required then a chaperone will generally be offered.

You lose any argument because you decided to resort to randomly insulting women who might disagree with you anyway...

We had an awful experience with a male nursery nurse. I can't even type it, it was so awful.

AllPlayedOut
I am from the area where these assaults have taken place.
This worker had worked at 20 child care centres.
Tip of the iceberg.
There must be huge changes to the childcare system.
Suggested are - 2 workers must be present at all times.
Security cameras to be installed in all areas.
Working With Children police checks are just a joke.
They are expecting huge numbers of class action lawsuits suits.
One of the news readers actually broke down on air.

U11

There was only one in my daughter's nursery, very briefly, and there wasn't much to say. He didn't do any of her nappy changes etc and I wouldn't have been comfortable with it if he did. I'm all for normalising male carers but it will take time and it's very difficult to balance I think.

My daughter has however had male play workers are forest school and outdoor based play centres and when she was younger she definitely had a different dynamic with them than female ones which was interesting. She also had a male teacher this year and he novelty has worn off for her 😆

My DD had a male keyworker in her 3 year old provision, he was fantastic and she loved him. I was a single parent and I really valued having a regularly present male role model.

If this helps OP- We have two young male members of staff at my daughter's nursery and they are both fantastic. Our daughter is very fond of both of them and I personally feel proud that this nursery has given her experiences from a young age of men in caring roles, alongside women.

Agree with this. If we accept and actively advocate for these things for women and girls in general, then they're a must for those women and girls who are additionally vulnerable whether that's age, disability etc.

"I'm all for normalising male carers but it will take time and it's very difficult to balance I think"
40 years ago I was changing kids' nappies at work. My dad did it in the 1960s. It's hardly a new concept 🤔😀

Yes, because 97-98% of nursery workers are female. Some women like Vanessa George have allowed themselves to be conduit for male abuse and that is obvious terrible but sexual abuse by female workers is still extremely rare.

A more informative stat is to consider the number of abuse cases by males in relation to their proportion of the workforce - 2-3%. I would suggest that as in other areas, the abuse cases per head perpetrated by males far exceeds that of women (by an exponential amount).

Criminologists know that the biggest determining factor in criminality is sex. Male people are significantly more likely than females to commit crimes (yes, I know your Nigel is lovely - no one is saying ALL males).

There are a tiny handful of male midwives in the country - guess how many now have convictions for sex offences? Some jobs attract men with bad intentions.

I’m not saying that no male should be a nursery worker and I’m glad people on this thread have (so far) had a good experience but we mustn’t forget the facts about safeguarding and prioritise the safety of children.

Agreed. I think that under no circumstances should a male worker being doing nappy changes. I believe that it presents too high a risk statistically.

Apparently there are 368,000 nursery workers in the UK. A quick search has brought up 4 cases of child sex abuse by nursery workers. (I’m sure there are more).

Two of those convicted are reported female (although sometimes male sex offenders are reported as female if they choose) - we know that Vanessa George is female and for this purpose I will assume Sophie Elms is too. They were both working at the instigation of a man - no excuse I know.

There are two male sex offenders reported. I couldn’t find a name for one in Bristol but the other was teenage male Jayden McCarthy who abused 9 altogether- raping two.

Obviously this is not fully researched but it won’t be far out. It shows there are roughly 2 female sex abusers out of 360,640 and 2 male abusers out of 7,360.

That is a big worry and posters on here enthusiastically shaming others who demonstrate a little caution when advocating for male nursery staff should reflect.

Except that women are less likely to commit all crimes than men.

Why is it so shocking? I said that ‘I know I shouldn’t feel this way’ but it can just be a natural instinct to feel uncomfortable with a man you don’t know particularly well changing your DDs nappies or helping them in the toilet 🤷‍♀️

I think there’s also the angle that a lot of us as women have had numerous bad experiences of men and it’s sometimes an instinct we can’t help. It’s like if you’re walking home at night and somebody is walking behind you. If you turn and see another woman you feel completely different than if you turn and see a male. If somebody says ‘I feel uncomfortable if I’m walking home alone at night and there is a man walking behind me’ that doesn’t mean they think all men are evil and dangerous predators does it?

The vast majority of nursery workers are female, so you'd need to look at the proportion of each sex that are abusive, not the total number of each.

I did a degree in Early Years Education. There were 59 girls on the course and 1 guy. He was an absolutely lovely guy, clearly loved working with 0-5s just as all the other 59 people on the course did.

However when it came to placements, every nursery he did work experience at, there was absolute uproar from the parents. One year the parents all pulled their kids out of the nursery on his 2nd day, threatened to all give notice to the nursery if he wasn’t removed from his placement. Purely because he was male, no other reason.

I felt so sad for him, that he would struggle to ever get a job in his chosen profession, purely because he was a man.

My 16 year old boy is thinking about paediatric nurse, primary school teacher or was thinking about doing childcare course. He is part of youth organisation and also coaches younger kids in his sport.
Another mum raised with me she didn't think he should do childcare course as you know he's a bloke - to quote her. Im sad myself and dc had talks about employability, people's prejudices etc.

I’m so sorry for you and your child

I agree that changes need to be made and soon. Little wonder that the newscaster was so upset. It’s terrible enough to read about let alone to have to report it to the nation. I cannot begin to imagine what those poor parents are enduring. I hope that they’ll receive as much support as possible.

It is not unreasonable or a bias to be nervous about men caring for pre-verbal or very young children. Mem commit the vast majority (like over 90%) of sexual crimes. The only reason we don't hear much about men abusing children in nurseries is because not many many work in nurseries as it isn't socially acceptable due to gender roles. If it was a 50-50 split between men and women, I guarantee the rates of abuse would increase significantly.

In the same vein, that's why single women need to be very careful about the strange men they move into their house. It's not bigoted. Just statistics.

We had one. He was great, really switched on. He did do nappy changes but the changing room was quite open.

Yes but also even when female doctors do procedures there also has to be a chaperone whether they're performing the procedure in a man or women. The same for male doctors when doing procedures on men or women. It's to keep everyone safe, so yes your right men commit more abuse in general but again for both female and male staff in a nursery, they have procedures e.g doors being open to make sure everybody can see what people are doing. All nursery staff are DBS checked and have safeguarding trainings. You can't stop everyone but it's also important to get men into early years and primary to act as positive role models for both girls and especially boys with rise of misogyny in young men.