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.

You would withdraw your child from nursery if a male member of staff started working there?

OP, I say this generally rather than aimed at any particular poster, but discussions like this are rarely productive with people who simply don't have the capacity to understand statistics generally (and the concept of per capita in particular) and/or are quite literally incapable of basic, detatched logical deduction. It's not necessarily a small number and one of the giveaways of its absence is lots of angry, emotional insults in place of reasoned responses.

There will be people who ARE capable of these things who disagree with you (I am undecided), which is a useful discussion to have, but in some cases it is very literally a waste of time to engage.

It seems to me that the immediately obvious things arguing against an absolute ban are the need for positive male role models and the fact it seriously limits the freedom and choices for the many men who genuinely want to pursue this as a career for good reasons.

HOWEVER, it does create a greater risk of CSA to have them in the setting, because no safeguarding is perfect (though it should be STRINGENT) coupled with your offending statistics, and I end up circling back to the question, "am I prepared to accept an almost inevitably greater number instances of CSA in nursery settings in order to give children male role models and not draconianly restrict the liberty of all men - good and bad?". And that is a deeply uncomfortable question because of course the answer to that is, "no, I don't think the harm of either of those things outweighs the harm of CSA."

But if we implement that in nursery, we may then encounter a further serious shortage in staff numbers. It may also become a job that becomes even more seriously underrespected and underpaid (because that's how 'women's work' is treated) leading to even fewer staff and of increasingly low quality.

The next reasonable question then also becomes, say, male paediatric doctors and nurses, male special needs carers or teachers etc. and we have to decide where we draw the line re any sort of male contact with children in a professional setting.

It's difficult and still something I'm forming an opinion on.

But welfare of children (one way and another) is the only thing that should seriously be considered - not the hurty feelings of adults.

"banning women from entering shops because they are statistically more likely to shoplift"

This is surely only because they are statistically more likely to be shoppers. For example, those shoplifting from women's clothing boutiques are likely to be more than 95% female. But obviously no such shops are calling for a ban on female shoppers. Ditto none of the supermarkets etc.

A more reasonable comparison would be with professions that are now obliged to consider females for positions in which they statistically don't perform as well as males.

Presumably if a ban on male nursery and childcare workers becomes acceptable, there would be much pressure to ensure that females can once again be legally barred from occupations in which employers would prefer males.

And we may need to get used to more such statistical restrictions being made in other contexts, on the basis of characteristics such as race, ethnicity, intellect, disability, social class etc.

I think this is a fair point, though I'd argue that a very clear and simple distinction could be made between "statistically don't perform as well as [group] when employed in [X]" vs "statistically cause more (serious) harm when employed in [X]" (appreciating that sometimes they might amount to the same - e.g. medicine).

There's also probably a distinction to be made between "X statistically cause more harm than Y" and "X statistically causes almost all of the harm (99%)".

Finally, I think there's a distinction to be made between scenarios in which you can easily pre-test for the issue (e.g. let's say that as a firefighter you need to be able to lift X weight for the safety of others - that should apply equally to men and women without adjustment. Fewer women will pass but that is no reason to exclude those women who do pass that objective test) vs situations like this in which it is not possible to know who qualified and who doesn't on an individual level until it's too late.

Both have higher probabilities of offending than a woman in the same situation, and that's the point. Both need vigilance. A blanket ban is not a possible solution, but it does go to the heart of the problem that OP is highlighting.

On the other hand, some employers will inevitably argue that streamlining their selection process by excluding women, with all the simplification and savings involved, far outweighs "the hurty feelings of the few" that this entails...

There may well be sound arguments for a little more statistics-based discrimination, or even a lot more. But as you seem to concede, it's potentially a minefield.

Absolutely

No, your instincts are entirely correct. Almost all sexual crimes against children are committed by men. Men who commit sex crime against children are over represented in early years settings.

It could well be (though I would argue only if poorly or expansively drafted into law).

I'm not sure that, "but it could get difficult" is an adequate terminus when considering a measure that could significantly reduce CSA in childcare settings, though.

Sorry, but it is a possible solution. Let's not pretend it's not just because it might be an uncomfortable or difficult one for adults.

I work in early years and can’t understand how this happened in the first place. There are always 2 members of staff when a child has a toileting accident or we need to go into toilets with a child.

Interesting parallel. Young drivers are a significantly higher risk on the roads. Some countries (Australia I think) have age-based restrictions on young drivers that don’t apply to older ones. And old age too: old people are required to go through additional tests in many places to retain their licences. I support both of those measures.

Do you see them as discriminatory and unfair?

Why would an age-based gate on under-30s women be illegitimate (if they were massively higher risk, which I think is the hypothetical you meant).

I don’t think a blanket ban on men in child care is the right answer btw, but I do think that there comes a point where disparities in an offending rate are so great it becomes better to formally recognise than to formally ignore the disparity. Men and sex offending is one such case to me.

This sounds like that sort of thing insurance pricing could solve in theory, though in practice I know there are laws to prevent insurers reflecting sex-based differences in risk so maybe that is illegal.

Excellent points, but I am very, very wary of underestimating the lifelong importance of good male role models.

Very stringent safeguarding / mutual supervision of all childcare workers would not only reduce the risks of CSA, but reduce the risk of physical and emotional abuse.

To me, it seems a more effective approach than simply banning males.

women are just as capable as men at being abusers

What do you mean by this bit?

Men are massively higher risk than women for sexual abuse.

Isn’t that like claiming that labradors are ‘just as capable’ of killing humans as pit bulls, because the former occasionally happens too?

Yet I think the additional controls on dangerous breeds are sensible. Why? They’re more dangerous (both by temperament and strength).

I don't disagree that this sort of stringent safeguarding would be preferable but I think the reality is that nurseries do in theory implement this already but that it is not consistently executed in practice. And I have some sympathy with that as I can see how outlier situations will occassionally occur with many very young children in one place. Do I'm not sure that it is more effective in practice (and in any event they're not mutually exclusive; arguably both operated together would be best).

I also don't underestimate the value of good male role models - truly, I don't - but I simply can't in good conscience knowingly trade that benefit for most children in exchange for more (albeit a minority) of children being sexually abused than otherwise would be. Which it seems to me is what I'd be doing, in cold reality.

I appreciate the discussion because I really don't have a settled opinion on this yet. But that is what I always come back to in the face of any difficulty with this proposed measure. My own conscience saying, "OK, so in exchange for [whatever argument] you'll accept [X] more sexually abused children?" Because I do think that's the reality.

It’s too risky with not much proven benefit for nursery age children. Don’t know why it was pushed for, I don’t think any parent really wanted that

This could be accomplished at the primary stage, no? I don’t know why it would be beneficial at such a young age when most children are with their mothers anyway.

Any vulnerable adult really. There was a case in Ireland where a male carer raped women with dementia. He may have raped over a two dozen elderly women (he was also a failed asylum seeker, which is a reason you probably never heard about it).

Why are men allowed access to vulnerable women in the first place? Wasn’t a woman raped to death on a ward in the UK recently?

Why are we doing this to our most vulnerable members of society? It’s not worth the risk.

So you really propose banning all men from working with anyone who is vulnerable? It’s absolutely crazy. There are very very small numbers of offenders and hundreds of thousands of men who work in the caring professions with absolutely no issue. With this nursery case, there are tens of thousands of nurseries across the country and this is one offender.

There are also mothers who kill their kids but we don’t say that all mums have to live in institutions where they are supervised with their kids at all times, as we can’t risk any of them coming to any harm.

I'm thinking along the lines of tighter rules on ratios / better funding / more enforcement of mutual supervision etc. It would cost money, but it's an investment in early childhood that would have many other benefits.

I just feel like the "banning males" approach is kind of a band-aid approach: banning half the population from working with children in order to compensate for a system that isn't up to scratch, which means that other safety issues are not addressed? Which then results in a net harm to children (ie, from physical / emotional abuse?).

The majority of CSA doesn’t happen in formal settings like school or nursery anyway. It happens in informal settings, within the immediate family, within the extended family and from family friends and acquaintances.

I wouldn’t ban all males but I do get the point OP. Men are statistically much more likely to sexually abuse a child than a woman. We are incredibly risk averse when it comes to our children.

I’d liken it to extended rear facing car seats. Most children won’t be in a car accident but just in case we reduce chances of harm as much as practicable. I don’t believe it’s practicable to ban all men ( or get rid of cars!) but we should reduce risks to a minimum.

I believe that putting a 17yo apprentice in charge of toilet duty shouldn’t be allowed. I get chatting to a toddler in the loo is often a rubbish job but anything thst requires dc to be alone / remove clothes should dictate more experienced staff member.

I think you desperately need to take your own advice here.
Yes, women are capable of abuse - there’s no denying that but statistically it’s about 98% more likely to be a man.
You’re definitely not a lawyer are you 🤣

Arguably yes, however the statistic of 90% of child sexual abuse cases by men does not take into account the nursery setting, where 3% of workers are male. A google search the first 10 links were all about female staff abusing children in nurseries. Obviously then % of female staff makes that more likely. I tried to find the specific statistics for nurseries but couldn’t. It’s a very difficult setting to apply numbers too, my point was more that the idea is absurd, hence the comparison. Where does it stop, should all teachers be female? What about further education? If not at what age? What about paediatric medical staff, should they all be female?

But for both men and women we are talking very small numbers compared to the overall number of people working in the professions. So out of every 1000 male nursery workers, one might be an offender. And out of every 10,000 female workers, one might be an offender. So in that example, men are 10 times more likely to be an offender but I’d still employ men here because the risk overall is very small.