Ban male nursery workers?

[BluntPlumHam]

I came across this article which has left me quite sick.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cze665j2y51o.amp

Said 18 year old was newly qualified nursery worker who’d SA’d and raped 3 year olds.

Nurseries are desperate for workers and I have noticed through friends and families that there is now an increasing number of men entering the profession.

Men traditionally haven’t performed this role and I often find it difficult to envisage what attracts a male to this profession to begin with when we have so many instances of men who run away from childcare responsibilities.

Although men entering the profession can be a positive outcome the other very concerning outcome and on the potential rise is this.

Sex offenders will target this profession no doubt as it gives them easy access to children.

men are significantly more likely than women to sexually assault children.
Official statistics consistently show that the vast majority of individuals convicted of, or reported for, child sexual abuse (CSA) are male. For example:

• In the year ending March 2019, the Crime Survey for England and Wales found that 92% of adults who reported experiencing CSA said the perpetrator was male only.
• In 2022/23, almost 99% of individuals convicted of child sexual abuse offences in the UK were men.
• Reports to the Australian Royal Commission by victims and survivors of institutional abuse revealed that 93.9% of the abuse was perpetrated by an adult man.

So just a blanket ban on them all together ?

It isn’t my personal opinion but I do think we ought to have measures in place to make nurseries more secure and safer. This thread is to invite discussion.

Also, kudos to those brave little 3 year olds who had the courage to tell their parents because they’ve saved a lot of potential victims in the future. My thoughts and wishes for a life time of healing for them and theirs.

What if a child was then abused by a woman? Not a hypothetical, it has happened more than once.

YABU

I’m sorry but I have to point out that your suggesting that female’s are somewhat on par with male offenders when it comes to statistics is just not true. Men are an overwhelmingly over representation in the stats.

I do agree with you on the safeguarding aspect, is it usual for staff to be alone with children ? It seems like the abuse occurred in the toilet.

YABU. I know men in the childcare industry who are brilliant at their jobs and in some cases better than female staff.
Having said that where I worked we had a policy of no lone working and although the nappy change units were fairly private people would still come in and out for various things eg one staff member changing a nappy and then another staff member comes in because a different child needs to use the toilet..
Abuse can happen in families too Should we never leave dad's/granddad's etc alone with their children?

Banning male nursery workers is a ridiculous overreaction. We do not want childcare to be ringfenced as women's work that men have no part in.

Better safeguarding is what is needed. Under safeguarding no one is given a carte blanche of assumed "safe to be around" status. Men and women equally need to always set up every situation to be properly safeguarded. That means that as a decent non-abusive person I am not going to agree to participate in any setup that, if an abusive predator was doing my role, they could use that as an opportunity to exploit or abuse. So nurseries should always have sufficient staff and sufficient space that no staff member is ever alone with a child, nothing can be done in secret and unwitnessed. Children being brought up with proper safeguarding should know that what's normal and safe is open doors and multiple adults around - and being in the kind of situation where an adult has a child isolated and without an escape is unusual and worth telling a parent/other adult about

I’m not interested in a poll, as the op states I’m interested in discussion.

YABVU. My BIL who has no partner or children of his own has always been an awesome role model for any children in the family, has loads of Godchildren, and now retired he works as a voluntary TA in a primary school. He is exactly the sort of man children with no male role models in their families need to be around.

No I don’t think you can discriminate based on crime statistics. What’s next? Women banned from shops because they’re statistically more likely to shoplift?

I can no longer edit this post, apologies for the grammar!

Agreed, I think there is a need for all nursery workers to be qualified, to do work placements where they are supervised at all times, and for their suitability for practice to be assessed. This requires investment though - both at the training stage and on an ongoing basis. At the moment, childcare is seen as an easy option for people with no qualifications and our children deserve better than this. I think there is a need for greater government regulation of nurseries.

How do you imagine women’s lives will ever be improved if we decide that women are the only people who can ever be trusted to look after children?

Two women working at a nursery near Manchester were jailed last year for mistreating tiny children in their care. One of the children was a baby under a year old and was treated so roughly - as a punishment for crying - that she died.

Should we ban women from working in nurseries as well, then? Or do you think abuse is only worth worrying about if there’s a sexual element to it?

Yabu

@BluntPlumHam I'm not working in UK so standards could be different so bear that in mind. Generally from age 3 the children toilet alone, sometimes they might need a bit of help pulling up pants or whatever. Where I work the toilets have low doors so staff stand outside and look in and only go in if asked or needed. Sometimes a child has an accident and needs changing so we bring them outside the cubicle where we are visible, mostly cos it's very confined in the cubicle and I genuinely don't know if this is a requirement or just habit. Due to ratios we are very aware if someone is in the toilet with a child and would come to see if everything is OK after a minute or two if they are gone into the cubicle as this would be very unusual. I don't work in a room where we toilet train but in my nursery these training toilets are very open with glass doors and windows so staff in the main room can see staff in the toilet area.

Sex offenders would be attracted to this job, well,known sex offenders would be unable to work with children anyway and sadly none of us can ever know who may be a sex offender, so perhaps none should do the job.Saying males shouldn’t do this job is on the lines of saying males shouldn’t be nurses or frankly do any job where they may be alone with children or women. It’s completely unreasonable

Absolutely not. We need good male role models in these roles, if anything we need more of them not less. Thankfully this type of behaviour is rare and hopefully lessons can be learned about how this happened. What we really need is really effective vetting beforehand, and processes in place in the workplace to safeguard as effectively as is possible. Just my opinion.

I do think that changes need to be made, generally, as there have been some horrendous cases of physical abuse too in nurseries in order to protect children from all forms of abuse but there’s no doubt that men are a much higher risk to children than women in terms of sexual abuse. Men who are paedophiles are also more likely to work with children than your average man so it is a very high risk environment and I don’t think that worrying about men’s feelings should be a consideration when we are talking about safeguarding.

I’m not sure about a blanket ban but I do think that men should not give personal care to children though I appreciate that it puts a bigger burden on the female workers.

This is an Australian article but it discusses the reality of the risks.

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/07/childcare-sexual-abuse-men-children-risk

I take your point, I know the case you refer to and there is an increase in violence against children in nursery settings. I suspect the same reason, easy access and poor safeguarding. This thread is primarily about sex offenders in particular male ones.

We are seeing an increase in men entering the profession and in my view it isn’t because all of a sudden large cohorts of men are interested in childcare. Yes there will be a few in there as other posters have provided anecdotes of however there will be a lot that are entering due to easy access.

Easy access means easy access for sexual predators.

It’s actually not that rare unfortunately. A quick 2 minute Google reveals dozens of cases and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks for the article I will give it a read.

Realistically they can't be banned.

However I refused to put my dc in nurseries where men would be dealing with them before they were verbal, and I refuse to have men caring for my disabled teen also. Imo it's not worth the risk.

I know the consensus on MN is that all the men in these roles are so much better than the women, but that's probably because women are always held to a higher standard, so a mediocre man is the same as an amazing woman.

I'm not sure what the answer is really, having 2 members of staff doing nappies/toilet runs isn't going to be logistically possible in a lot of places, and having cameras covering all areas of nurseries comes with its own privacy issues and problems too.

YABVU

I wouldn’t - we need more men in caring professions - the ones I’ve met at DT’s nursery and as nurses were excellent.

I think this - I’d be a lot more comfortable with men in early years childcare if we were more like some of the scandi countries where the role is seen more on a par with a teacher or psychologist, a respected, professional role requiring skill and expertise. The role is all that but it’s not treated that way in our society or often performed by people with expertise.

In general I’d like to normalise men in caring roles but in our modern misogynistic society and the statistical level of risk - I think not having men in these roles is a reasonable consideration/discussion we need to have. Very sad.

For all the women saying “I have a male friend who is in the industry and he’s a stand up guy” do you think child abusers are just announcing it everywhere? Child abusers are only able to do so by also grooming everyone around them into trusting them.

OP, I agree with you.

Young boys need positive role models.

Those with none in their lives are more likely to have issues later in their own lives.

Good safeguarding practises need to be in place. The challenge in nurseries in particular is hitting the balance between privacy and safeguarding.

Removing toilet doors, nappy changes in a designated area in the main room etc solve the safeguarding issue. But many aren’t keen on that for privacy reasons.