To be seriously concerned about sending DS to nursery given news today?

[SharpPinkDuck]

I have a 14 month old DS and had been planning for him to start nursery 3 days per week in London in January as I have a new part time job which I’d been really looking forward to.

However having read the horrific, disgusting news today about the nursery worker in London who SA’d the babies and children I feel incredibly anxious and unsure that I should be sending him. I don’t feel at all comfortable with the idea of any male coming into contact with him in a nursery setting, I don’t care if that’s an outdated attitude, I am not willing to risk it and clearly there is a risk. My nursery had no men while I looked around and we liked the setting and the staff.

Does anyone have any advice? I cannot believe the world is this way, that I can’t send my child to nursery costing a fortune for fear of him being sexually assaulted or worse.

These horrific cases make the news because they are rare. You can never eliminate all danger to your child while they are out of your care but there are thousands of nurseries and childminders and the vast majority are taking good care of the children they look after, whether the staff are male or female.

I would have avoided nurseries with male staff too, i have to be honest. I know females can also be vile, but Its just a personal preference.
I found a montessory type nursery that had CCTV in their rooms and only 1 parent/carer per child was able to access the cameras & only during the hours/days their child was in. It had multiple levels of security to access. It was such a comfort to me to be able to log in and see my child safe & sound either in the garden or in the room.
There was a room on the side where children were taken to get changed or use the potty/toilet (with no camera obviously) so no worries about privacy in that aspect either. I also really liked that the nursery used an app that was updated in real time every time a nappy change/potty session was attempted/completed so there was a window when they wouldn’t be visible on camera, but it was peace of mind because you could account for it. And the door was half height for privacy but it meant staff were never ‘behind closed doors’ from other staff at any given time.
I recommend trying to find a nursery with a secure camera system and similar set up. I also advise you go with your gut instinct. A smaller more intimate nursery is better than a huge nursery setting I think. Meet the staff and talk about your concerns and worries. They won’t be offended, they will be equally horrified by the shocking news too and expect parents anxieties. You’ll know if it feels genuine and they put you at ease. I think building a great report with the people trusted to keep your child safe, is also a huge factor.

This isn’t about risk. It’s about the level of control you feel you have over the risk.

Whenever you read about a child dying in a house fire, or a a car accident, or indeed domestic abuse do you feel you should give up driving your children anywhere, or sleeping while your children are in the house, or living with your spouse?

The answers is generally no, because you feel you have control over how you drive, or how safe your home environment is for your child, and YOUR chosen spouse isn’t the child abusing kind, so you’re happy you have control over the risk, and terrible things happening to other children don’t impact you.

The heightened risk awareness issue with, for example, abuse in child care settings is not that it might happen (it’s very, very unlikely) but that you have no control at all over whether or not it does happen - it’s a risk you can’t moderate or mitigate by your behaviour.

So, you try to introduce some level of control - by, for example, proposing restrictions about who is allowed to be near your children in these settings. The fact that these make a tiny risk into a slightly tinier risk isn’t really important - the thing that makes you feel better is that you feel you have asserted some control over the risk level.

but this innate inability to measure risk effectively by parents is no reason at all to restrict 50% the population from an entire section of employment (and indeed wider social participation - if men can’t work in nurseries, they can’t work with small children at all…)

I worked with someone ages ago now, who also had a part time job s a church organist.He had learned to play the organ as a young teenager and claimed he had been sexually abused by his organ tutor, a much older man.He had reported this man to his mother but she ignored him saying she did not believe him.He got alarmed when he heard that a co-worker was sending her 8 year old daughter to piano lessons with this man and informed her to never leave her daughter alone with him.The lady replied that either her or her husband always stayed in the room in case something ''funny''happened.
My work mate later found out that this man was the organist in a local church, and had been arrested for child abuse.

I would avoid nurseries with men 🤷 it's just fact that something like 95% of sexual crimes against children are committed by men. I don't want my pre-verbal child in a situation where she is alone with a man I do not know very well, period. Yes children are more likely to be abused by someone they know, but, like...would many people really feel comfortable leaving their child with a male childminder, for example?

not the same as an unknown male. Obviously

Human babies and toddlers are just incredibly fragile. I would not leave them with others unless I had absolutely no choice. Yanbu.

Lots of guilt tripping on here for parents who are choosing to use paid childcare when they have children and return to work.

I do hope those who are saying that ‘they would never have anyone else look after their child’ were completely self funded financially as SAHP and (with the exception of child benefit) we’re not in receipt of housing benefits, disability payments etc which facilitated them ‘choosing’ to stay home.

I also would expect them to be in a stable long term relationship and therefore never be introducing a new partner to their young and vulnerable children.

I am all for ‘choice’ but a choice to be a SAHP should not be a government benefit funded one. Benefits should be those who really need help to support disability not a lifestyle choice.

…and for everyone saying ‘I do work part time around the children / DP’ and are playing the 16 hour game to maximise benefits rather than needing to childcare you really should not be guilt tripping parents who have been brought up with a different value system of providing for their family themselves.

You can get help for your anxiety.

If you believe all men are a danger to children, when do you plan to sit down with your own son to tell him he is going to turn into a child abuser?

Have you thought about what you will say to him?

Will you just come right our and say it, or will you try to justify it first.

If you have other children, will you allow your son to be around them?

What about his father?

Or.do you mean not all men?

So you think all parents should treat their own sons as child abusers?

Because you have just said you don't trust any men.

Should all fathers be banned from contact with their own children?

Just curious about your views.

You are looking at reducing risk so no I wouldn’t use a nursery setting with a male worker. I also wouldn’t want to use a setting with a very high turnover of staff or a disproportionate amount of very young staff.

We didn’t have to use a nursery (other than school nursery) as a close family member is a childminder.

If choosing a childminder I would make sure you go to local playgroups that they attend to see how they interact with their children first before they know who you are. I was at these playgroups and could see within minutes the ones I wouldn’t have used for my kids.

Other than that I would say if possible - professional partner who is out of the house for most of the day, no male older children in the house, how is the person known in the community- what do other adults/peers think of them.

It’s just about reducing probability of risk. I know that you can’t reduce these risks to zero and there are people who ‘noone would suspect’ but there are also lots of signs for many too.

Of the people that have been later known to be a risk to children in our community over my lifetime there were signs. So in workplaces you need people with experience and a culture of being able to raise issues when something doesn’t feel right. Also these things tend not to happen in pockets - the childminder above that set off my spidey senses had fallen out with many neighbours, fractured family situation with people estranged, generally known as not a good and warm person and then issues with children she was minding (not SA)

Personally I would not be considering nursery for a child under 3. I’m not surprised you’re uncomfortable. My husband agreed and worked so much to allow this… he’d be doing 5/6 night shifts a week. Is there a way to jiggle things around so you can stay at home and take care of him?
If not, then I think you’re stuck really. Yes lots of childminders have their husbands around the childmindees. Only other option I suppose is a nanny. Unless you’ve got a grandparent around to help.

Not on mumsnet - mostly the comments are very anti-SAHM.

Why would a childminder, where there are likely no other staff present and much less stringent rules in place than a nursery, provide a safer environment? I’d be much more concerned about my child at a childminders, you have no idea who she might have in the house during the course of the day.

OP, I get your concerns. You have to go with your gut on this one. I chose my son’s nursery as the staff were all female, highly experienced, and had wonderful publicly available reviews on individual members of staff, and importantly, was extremely secure. I knew there would be no randoms able to have access to my son.

He is thriving there, absolutely loves his key worker and is way ahead of his age developmentally, I think the nursery have played a big part in this.

Did you read the part where I said 'men I don't know very well'? I trust my dad, my brother, my lifelong family friend, etc. I still wouldn't leave my girl alone with a new male step relative though, for example!

Woman are right to be wary of men. You only need to look at cases like Giselle Pelicot to understand why. I'm never going to feel bad about it 🤷 If men stop abusing and raping at the rates that they do, they may earn more societal trust.

I stand by what I said...I think the vast majority of women would not feel comfortable leaving their child with a male childminder.

How is this helping @SharpPinkDuck?

I find this assumption on here that men can't work with children without being abusers and should be banned from it very uncomfortable. Banning men from working in nurseries is not only discrimination, but would really set a strange precedent for this with other groups. It's like looking at anyone from the middle east and assuming they are a terrorist.

Obviously this is such an emotive subject that people might say these things as it is such an upsetting case, but we do need to be rational about this.

I've worked in a care environment and some of the best carers were men.

I just don't think it's comparable. The vast majority of middle Easterns aren't terrorists. Almost all women have a story about abuse or harassment from a man. Statistically, men commit well over 90% of sexual crimes against children. I also don't think we could ban men from working with children, but I don't think women are wrong to feel uncomfortable.

I think the difference with a childminder is that you choose the person who cares for your child.
Yes, you have to trust them that they won't hurt your child or allow anyone else to, but you only have to put your trust in one person that you get to know well and have personally chosen.
Whereas with a nursery, you are trusting a business/institution and don't tend to have much knowledge or any control over who is actually caring for your child. Though with a business you hope there is a protective effect of many people involved and possibly CCTV.

You have an absolutely toxic attitude towards men. How does the fact that you know a man well prevent him from abusing children.

Most children who victims of abuse are abused by close family members, not strangers in a professional setting.

My daughter works in a nursery and all the staff are very dedicated which includes a man. He has to work with the older children as I think some parents were uncomfortable with him changing nappies. The rules and regulations are very strict, the food is healthy and the children are very prepared when they start school.

There are horrifying cases of teachers found guilty of sexual abuse in secondary schools. Do we never send our children to secondary schools just in case? There was a dreadful accident on the road about a hundred miles away nowhere near my house yesterday. Should I be concerned about letting my child cross the road just in case? It’s about perspective. Some things in life we can’t predict and just because it happens somewhere else can’t be a measure to stop other people from doing every day normal things that everyone does every single day everywhere in the country. Yes it’s horrific but it’s not every nursery in every town in every district everywhere in the whole country. Most of us can count on one hand the cases like this we have heard of in our lifetime although one case is too many, but we have to have some perspective otherwise we’d all be locked in the cupboard under the stairs for the rest of our lives scared to go outside ever again. At some point we have to have at least some trust in every day life to be able to function normally.

Would you want your pre-verbal child looked after alone by a male childminder?

Op, your concerns are valid. There was a thread few weeks ago about another key worker who was convicted recently for CSA in a nursery. It was a male.

it was apparent from that thread that a) the average mumsnet user cannot comprehend basic statistics and b) there is a genuine belief in here that there is very little to no risk of CSA in nurseries due to adequate safeguarding.

statistics show that men hold 99 percent of the convictions for CSA, not even comparable to women, they’re not even close.

With the dire straits nurseries are in they’re letting anyone who can pass the piss easy qualifications into their settings. That’s why we are seeing an increase in men now getting into this role and it is clearly an attractive, easy access option for CSA offenders.

Background checks are useless because a lot of them don’t have previous.

This man you refer to has been convicted of 22! 22 convictions of which one is digital penetration of a 2 year old girl ! How on earth he got away with that is beyond me. Staff didn’t ‘catch’ him until he had committed 22 CSA offences and even then it was just a video they picked up on. So safeguarding isn’t a reliable argument either.

Also ‘women’ abuse too argument is tired and boring they do not commit CSA at a level that men do. The more nursery male workers we see the more CSA we will see because of how rife it is unfortunately.

Australia is ahead of the U.K. in this, they’ve had male nursery workers longer than us.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-27/childcare-centres-paedophiles-abuse-four-corners/105926324

Given that males are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of said crime then that risk translates into realtime when there is a male nursery worker. I would not send my child there. If you are thinking about SAHM and can financially do it then I would your concerns are valid.